Before the mid-17th century composers made little stylistic distinction between one keyboard instrument and another, and players used whichever happened to be available or was best suited to the occasion. Liturgically based works and those containing either long-sustained notes or pedal parts would be heard most often on the organ, and dances and settings of popular tunes on the harpsichord; nevertheless, much of the repertory could be shared. While a number of high Baroque composers exploited the individual characteristics of the organ, harpsichord or clavichord, it was not until the latter half of the 18th century that a distinctive style for the piano, which had been invented about 1700, began to appear: hence the main divisions of this article.
IV. Harpsichord music in the 20th century.
JOHN CALDWELL (bibliography with CHRISTOPHER MAXIM) (I), BARBARA OWEN (II), ROBERT WINTER (III, 1–5), SUSAN BRADSHAW (III, 6–7), MARTIN ELSTE (IV)
The term ‘keyboard’ is here understood to include not only the early string keyboard instruments (the clavichord, harpsichord, virginals etc.), but also the various types of organ (the positive, regal, church organ with and without pedals etc.). See also Sources of keyboard music to 1660 and Editions, historical.
Keyboard music, §I: Keyboard music to c1750
Although the surviving sources of keyboard music go back no further than the second half of the 14th century, players and instruments are known to have existed long before. It seems likely that the lack of an earlier repertory is due at least in part to the loss of manuscripts, but more to the fact that players during the earliest period relied largely on vocal originals and improvisation.
The earliest known keyboard source is the Robertsbridge Codex of about 1360 (GB-Lbl Add.28550). This two-leaf fragment, bound with a manuscript from the former priory of Robertsbridge, Sussex, was written in England, though some of the music in it is based on French vocal originals. The pieces in estampie form with which it begins (one represented by its ending only, and two complete) have stylistic affinities with the monophonic Italian istampitte (in GB-Lbl Add.29987), while the next two pieces are ornamented transcriptions of motets also found in the Roman de Fauvel (F-Pn fr.146). A final, incomplete piece is based on an English vocal cantilena. In the estampies the writing is mostly in two parts, though at cadences the texture tends to become fuller, as often happens in keyboard music. In the motet arrangements the top part of the three-voice original is decorated, or ‘coloured’, mainly in conjunct motion and in relatively short note values. The remaining parts are generally left unchanged, though occasionally one is omitted or an extra part added. There is no indication of the instrument for which the pieces were intended, although there is evidence from contemporary Spain that similar music could be played on small portable organs (Marshall, E1992).
The bulk of the Reina Manuscript (F-Pn n.a.fr.6771) and the musical sections of the Faenza Manuscript (I-FZc 117) belong respectively to the late 14th century and the early 15th. Only a keyboard setting of Francesco Landini’s ballata Questa fanciulla and an unidentified keyboard piece are included among Reina’s otherwise exclusively vocal repertory; but the oldest part of Faenza consists entirely of keyboard pieces, though it is sometimes maintained that they were intended for two non-keyboard instruments. There are arrangements of secular vocal works by Italian and French composers of the 14th and early 15th centuries (such as Landini, Jacopo da Bologna, Machaut and Pierre des Molins) and settings of liturgical chants including two Kyrie-Gloria pairs based on the plainchant Mass IV, Cunctipotens genitor Deus (see ex.1, the conclusion of a Kyrie verse). The Kyrie-Gloria settings are the first of countless plainchant settings designed for alternatim performance during the liturgy, in which only the alternate verses are set for organ, while the remainder are sung in unison by the unaccompanied choir. Except for a few three-part cadential chords in Faenza, the pieces in both manuscripts are all in two parts, though many of the secular vocal originals are in three. There are also fragments of Italian origin in Padua (I-Pas S Giustina 553; see PMFC, xii, 1976, p.187) and (probably) Groningen (see Daalen and Harrison, D1984).
The remaining 15th-century sources are all German, three of the most significant being Adam Ileborgh’s tablature of 1448 (formerly in US-PHci; now privately owned), Conrad Paumann’s Fundamentum organisandi of 1452 (D-Bsb Mus.ms.40613), and the Buxheim Organbook of about 1460–70 (D-Mbs Cim.352b). Ileborgh’s tablature is notable for its five short preludes, which are the earliest known keyboard pieces (other than dances) that do not rely in any way on a vocal original. In one of them pedals are indicated; and a double pedal part seems to be required in two others, where a florid upper line crosses a pair of lower lines as they move slowly from a 5th to a 3rd and back again. Paumann’s Fundamentum is one of several treatises that illustrate techniques used in extemporization and composition. It provides examples of a florid part added above various patterns of bass; of decorated clausulas; of two free parts; and of two parts above a static bass. In addition, the manuscript includes a number of preludes, several two- and three-part pieces based on both sacred and secular tenors, by Georg de Putenheim, Guillaume Legrant, Paumgartner and (presumably) Paumann himself, and an arrangement of Ciconia’s Con lagrime. The Buxheim Organbook, which may also be associated with Paumann or his disciples, is the most comprehensive of all 15th-century keyboard sources. It contains over 250 pieces, of which more than half are based on either chansons or motets by German, French, Italian and English composers. They are of two main types. In the first, the whole of the original texture is used, one part being embellished while the rest are left more or less untouched, as in the Robertsbridge motets. In the second, the tenor alone is borrowed, to provide the foundation for what is otherwise a new composition. The rest of the manuscript includes liturgical plainchant pieces, preludes, and pieces based on basse-danse melodies. In the liturgical pieces the plainchant sometimes appears in long equal notes in one part, while the remaining parts have counterpoints in more varied rhythms. But more often the plainchant itself is ornamented or even paraphrased. The preludes are mostly regularly barred (unlike Ileborgh’s), and often alternate chordal and florid passages in a way that foreshadows the later toccata. Most of the pieces are in three parts, although sometimes in two and occasionally in four (an innovation for keyboard music). The tenor and countertenor lines (the two lowest in the three-part pieces) have roughly the same compass; and as the countertenor was always added last, as in earlier vocal music, it constantly and often awkwardly has to cross and recross the tenor in order to find a vacant space for itself. Pedals are sometimes indicated by the sign P or Pe; apparently they could also be used elsewhere, for a note at the end of the volume explains that they should always play whichever tenor or countertenor note happens to be the lower.
Keyboard music, §I: Keyboard music to c1750
Printed keyboard music began to appear during the 16th century. Liturgical plainchant pieces remained of paramount importance; but they were joined by settings of Lutheran chorales (hymn tunes), and by an increasing number of secular works such as dances, settings of popular tunes, variations, preludes and toccatas. Of great significance, too, were the sectional contrapuntal forms of keyboard music derived from 16th-century vocal forms, including the contrapuntal keyboard ricercare as well as the canzona, capriccio and fantasy.
The earliest known printed volume devoted at least in part to keyboard music is Arnolt Schlick’s Tabulaturen etlicher Lobgesang und Lidlein uff die Orgel und Lauten (Mainz, 1512). Besides lute solos and songs with lute accompaniment, it contains 14 pieces for organ with pedals. They are in either three or four parts and are almost all based on plainchant, an exception being a setting of the vernacular sacred song Maria zart, which foreshadows a later type of chorale prelude by echoing the phrases of the melody in the accompaniment. In Schlick’s unique ten-part manuscript setting of the chant Ascendo ad Patrem (I-TRa tedesca 105) no fewer than four of the parts are assigned to the pedals.
The remaining German sources contain dances and arrangements of both sacred and secular vocal music, some being anthologies while others appear to be the work of a single composer. Although most of them are described as being for either ‘Orgel’ or ‘Orgel oder Instrument’, they are generally equally well (or even better) suited to harpsichord or spinet. The two earliest are a pair of manuscripts (CH-Bu F.IX.22 and F.IX.58) written by Hans Kotter between 1513 and 1532 for the use of the Swiss humanist Bonifacius Amerbach. In addition to embellished arrangements of vocal works by Paul Hofhaimer, Heinrich Isaac, Josquin Des Prez and others, they include preludes and dances, some of which are by Kotter himself. Typical of the latter is a Spanioler in which the basse-danse melody Il re di Spagna is given to the tenor, each note being played twice in long-short rhythm, while treble and bass have more lively counterpoints. Later tablatures, some printed and others manuscript, are those of Elias Nikolaus Ammerbach (1571, 1583), Bernhard Schmid the elder (1577), Jacob Paix (1583), Christhoff Leoffelholz von Colberg (1585) and August Nörmiger (1598). A new trend is shown by the inclusion of 20 Lutheran chorales in Ammerbach’s volume and over 70 in Nörmiger’s. The plain melody is generally, though not invariably, given to the top part, while the remaining three parts provide simple harmony with an occasional suggestion of flowing counterpoint. A Fundamentum of about 1520 by Hans Buchner, similar to Paumann’s but dealing with a later style of three-part counterpoint, contains the earliest known example of keyboard fingering.
The dances in the tablatures and other sources are often grouped in slow-quick pairs, such as a passamezzo and saltarello, or a pavan and galliard, in which the second dance (in triple time) may or may not be a variation of the first (in duple). Not infrequently they are based on one or other of the standard harmonic patterns known throughout western Europe, of which the passamezzo antico and the passamezzo moderno or quadran were the most common.
In Italy the printing of keyboard music began in 1517 with a book of anonymous arrangements entitled Frottole intabulate da sonare organi. The mainly homophonic textures of the four-part vocal originals (mostly by Bartolomeo Tromboncino) are lightly embellished to give a more flowing effect; but, as is characteristic of keyboard music, the number of parts employed at any moment depends more on the capacity of a player’s hands, and the demands of colour and accent, than on the rules of strict part-writing. Similar freedom was exercised, as illustrated in ex.2, by Marco Antonio Cavazzoni, whose Recerchari, motetti, canzoni (1523) was the earliest keyboard publication by a named Italian composer. His brilliant son Girolamo Cavazzoni, perhaps working under the influence of the Spaniard Antonio de Cabezón (see below), developed from his father’s rambling ricercares a clearly defined form in dovetailed imitative sections that became the standard pattern of such works. His two books of intavolature (1543) contain hymn and plainchant settings for organ and two canzonas with French titles. One of the latter, the lively Il est bel et bon, is virtually an original composition, for it uses no more than the first bar and a half of the chanson by Passereau on which it is allegedly based, while the other, a version of Josquin’s Faulte d’argent, is a very free paraphrase.
During the second half of the century the most important centre for Italian keyboard music was Venice, where Andrea Gabrieli, his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Merulo were numbered among the organists of the Basilica di S Marco. Andrea’s keyboard works were issued posthumously between 1593 and 1605 by Giovanni, who added several of his own compositions to his uncle’s. Each contributed a set of intonazioni in all the ‘tones’ or modes – short pieces used during the liturgy either as interludes, or to give the choir the pitch and mode of the music they were about to sing. Like earlier preludes, they often include some brilliant passagework; this led by extension to the toccata, essentially a keyboard piece in several contrasted sections designed to display the varied capabilities of a player and his instrument. The toccatas of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli rely mainly on the contrast between sustained writing and brilliant passagework; but Merulo enlarged the form by introducing one or more sections of imitative counterpoint. In addition to toccatas all three composers wrote ricercares, ornate chanson arrangements and original canzonas. The ricercares follow the sectional pattern established by Girolamo Cavazzoni; but those of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli have fewer themes (sometimes only one) and achieve variety by the use of inversion, augmentation, diminution and stretto, and by the importance given to secondary material such as a countersubject or a new thematic tag. Canzonas tend to be lighter in feeling than ricercares, and often begin with a rhythmic formula of three repeated notes, for instance minim–crotchet–crotchet. None of the works requires pedals, and many of them are as well suited to the harpsichord as to the organ.
The earliest Italian keyboard dances are found in a small anonymous manuscript of about 1520 (I-Vnm Ital.iv.1227). Both here and in the anonymous Intabolatura nova di varie sorte de balli (1551), the melody is confined to the right hand, while the left has little more than a rhythmical chordal accompaniment. More sophisticated textures appear in the dance publications of Marco Facoli (1588) and G.M. Radino (1592), proving that the addition of simple counterpoint and right-hand embellishments can make such pieces sufficiently interesting to be played and heard for their own sake, and not merely as an accompaniment for dancing.
Although England lagged far behind the Continent in printing keyboard music, British composers led the way in developing keyboard techniques. The broken-chord basses characteristic of later string keyboard writing appear in a manuscript of about 1520–40 (GB-Lbl Roy.App.58), which contains an adventurous ‘Hornpype’ by Hugh Aston and two anonymous pieces, My Lady Careys Dompe and The Short Mesure of My Lady Wynkfylds Rownde, which may also be by him. All three have ostinato left-hand parts. The repertory for organ (manuals only) from about the same period consists of almost 100 liturgical plainchant pieces (GB-Lbl Roy.App.56, Add.15233, Add.29996; and Och Mus.371; see Early Tudor Organ Music, i, ed. J. Caldwell, and ii, ed. D. Stevens, London, 1966–9). The plainchant is used in various ways. It may be given to a single part in long equal notes, decorated rhythmically and/or melodically, or paraphrased so freely as to be almost unrecognizable; or again, either a single section or several sections of the melody may form the basis of an otherwise free composition. At first the most favoured plainchants were the offertory Felix namque and the antiphon Miserere mihi Domine; but after the Reformation these gave place to the antiphon Gloria tibi Trinitas, which, used non-liturgically and often under the title In nomine, remained immensely popular with English composers for more than a century. The only known English setting of the Ordinary of the Mass is by Philip ap Rhys ‘of St Paul’s in London’. Among the remaining named composers, the two whose works are outstanding in both quality and quantity are John Redford (d 1547) and Thomas Preston. At first glance much of their music may seem vocal in style; but a genuine understanding of the keyboard is shown by the widely ranging parts, the skilful deployment of the hands and the idiomatic figuration. Virtually no ornament signs are used, but written-out shakes and turns are occasionally incorporated in the text.
More of Redford’s works are found in the anthology known as the Mulliner Book (c1550–75; GB-Lbl Add.30513), to which the other principal contributors were Thomas Tallis and William Blitheman. In addition to many plainchant pieces the manuscript contains simple transcriptions of Latin and English motets, secular partsongs and consort music. Most of the music was probably intended primarily, though not exclusively, for organ; but three anonymous pieces at the beginning of the manuscript, and a later pavan by Newman (no.116), have the chordal basses that distinguish string keyboard music. Similar basses are found in the Dublin Virginal Manuscript (c1570; EIRE-Dtc D.3.30), which consists almost entirely of anonymous dances. These contain a sprinkling of the double- and single-stroke ornaments and many of the varied repeats or ‘divisions’ that later became ubiquitous features of the virginals style. The earlier keyboard music of William Byrd, much of which was collected in the manuscript ‘My Ladye Nevells Booke’ (1591), exploits these idioms in an individual and highly sophisticated fashion.
The only surviving French sources of the 16th century are seven small books of anonymous pieces published by Pierre Attaingnant of Paris in 1530–31. Three are devoted to chanson arrangements (some of them also known in lute versions); two to alternatim plainchant settings of the Mass, Magnificat and Te Deum; one to motet arrangements; and one to dances (galliards, pavans, branles and basse danses). All are described as being ‘en la tablature des orgues, espinettes et manicordions’; but the dances and chanson arrangements are best suited to string keyboard instruments, and the remainder to the organ.
The outstanding keyboard composer of the first half of the century was Antonio de Cabezón, organist to Charles V and Philip II of Spain. A number of his works (ascribed simply to ‘Antonio’) were included in Venegas de Henestrosa’s anthology Libro de cifra nueva (1557); but the principal source is the volume of Cabezón’s own Obras de música published posthumously in 1578 by his son Hernando. Although both collections are described as being for ‘tecla, arpa y vihuela’ (keyboard, harp and vihuela), they were intended primarily for keyboard – the plainchant settings for organ, the diferencias (variations) for harpsichord, and the tientos (ricercares) for either instrument. Cabezón’s style is severe, with textures that are generally contrapuntal and always in a definite number of parts. The tientos present a number of themes in succession, each section beginning with strict imitation and culminating in free counterpoint, often in relatively small note values. No ornament signs are used, but a favourite embellishment is a written-out shake with turn. Moreover, it seems likely that contemporary players would have added extempore redobles (turns), quiebros (shakes, and upper or lower mordents) and glosas (diminutions), as recommended in Tomás de Santa Maria’s treatise, Libro llamado Arte de tañer fantasia (1565). The diferencias are lighter in mood, though still strictly contrapuntal. In one of the finest, El canto llano del caballero, the melody is at first plainly harmonized, then given successively to soprano, tenor, alto, and again tenor, with flowing counterpoint in the remaining voices. As a member of Philip’s private chapel, Cabezón visited Italy, Germany and the Netherlands in 1548–51, and the Netherlands and England in 1554–6; yet he appears to have had surprisingly little influence on the many composers he must have met during his travels.
Keyboard music from Poland survives in several manuscripts, of which the most comprehensive is the so-called Lublin Tablature, copied by Jan z Lublina during the years 1537–48 (PL-Kp 1716). It contains some 250 works, mostly anonymous, and includes liturgical plainchant pieces, preludes, dances (often in slow–quick pairs), and arrangements of vocal works with Latin, German, French, Italian and Polish titles. The influence of the German school is apparent throughout and extends even to the notation used.
Keyboard music, §I: Keyboard music to c1750
Among the principal forms and types of keyboard music introduced during the 17th century were suites, genre or character-pieces, paired preludes and fugues, chorale preludes, and (from about 1680) sonatas. Superb organs in northern and central Germany encouraged the use of the newly independent pedal registers, thus underlining the difference between organ and string keyboard idioms. But the earlier more ‘generalized’ style of keyboard writing tended to persist wherever organs were less highly developed.
During the early part of the century the main advances in technique still took place in England, where the printing of keyboard music began at long last with Parthenia or the Maydenhead of the First Musicke that Ever was Printed for the Virginalls (1612–13). Its three contributors, Byrd, Bull and Orlando Gibbons, represented successive generations of the great school of virginalists that spanned the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The remaining sources of solo virginals music are manuscripts, however, for the apparent sequel, Parthenia In-violata (c1624), is for virginals and bass viol. The most comprehensive manuscript source is the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (c1609–19; GB-Cfm 32.g.29), which provides a cross-section of the whole repertory from Tallis (c1505–1585) to Tomkins (1572–1656). Besides containing many unique texts, this remarkable anthology shows the ever-growing popularity of secular works such as dances, settings of song-tunes, variations, fantasias and genre pieces.
Typical of the virginals idiom, as developed by Byrd, are textures that range from contrapuntal imitation to plain harmony in either broken or block chords; a constantly varying number of parts; short figurative motifs; and florid decoration – particularly in the ‘divisions’, or varied repeats, that are often included in the text. Profuse ornamentation is a constant feature of the style, though oddly enough there is no contemporary explanation of the two signs commonly used to designate ornaments – the double and single stroke. Organ music is distinguished mainly by its liturgical function, but also by an absence of broken-chord basses and a preference for contrapuntal textures in a definite number of parts.
Keyboard techniques were enormously extended by Bull, who was the greatest virtuoso of the day, and by Farnaby, a minor master of rare charm. Brilliant effects were achieved by figuration based on broken octaves, 6ths, 3rds and common chords, by the use of quick repeated notes and wide leaps, and even (in Bull’s ‘Walsingham’ variations, MB, xix, 1963, 2/1970, no.85; ex.3) by the crossing of hands. Farnaby’s tiny piece ‘For Two Virginals’ (MB, xxiv, 1965, no.25), one of the earliest works of its kind, consists of no more than a plain and a decorated version of the same music played simultaneously. A clearer grasp of the true principles of duet writing is shown, however, in Tomkins’s single-keyboard ‘Fancy: for Two to Play’ (MB, v, 1955, 2/1964, no.32); for though based on choral procedures, its mixture of antiphonal and contrapuntal textures neatly displays the essential individuality-cum-unity of two performers.
By the time the aged Tomkins died in 1656 younger composers were already turning towards a new style, French-influenced, in which the main thematic interest lay in the top line. The change can be seen clearly in the short, tuneful pieces of Musicks Hand-maide (1663), a collection of ‘new and pleasant lessons for the virginals or harpsycon’. One of the few composers named in it is Matthew Locke, whose more ambitious anthology, Melothesia (1673), is prefaced significantly by ‘certain rules for playing upon a continued-bass’. It includes seven of his own pieces (voluntaries) for organ and ‘for double [i.e. two-manual] organ’, and a number of suites (not so named) by himself and others, consisting generally of an almain, corant, saraband and one or more additional movements. Similar suites were written later by Blow and his pupil Purcell, the principal contributors to The Second Part of Musick’s Hand-maid (1689); Purcell’s were issued posthumously as A Choice Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinnet (1696) and four of Blow’s appeared two years later with the same title. All these publications were aimed at the amateur. But Purcell’s harpsichord music, though small in scale, is no less masterly than his more ambitious works for theatre, court and the church; and at times it achieves a depth and poignancy – particularly in the ground basses of which he was so fond – that is quite disproportionate to its size. Blow was the more significant organ composer of the two. His 30-odd voluntaries and verses (Purcell wrote only half a dozen) are sectional contrapuntal pieces based on either one or two subjects. Two of them (nos.2 and 29 in Watkins Shaw’s edition, 1958, 2/1972) unaccountably quote sizeable passages from Frescobaldi’s Toccate e partite d’intavolatura di cimbalo (1615), and another (no.5) is similarly indebted to one of Michelangelo Rossi’s published toccatas.
More orthodox musical exchanges between the Continent and England had already taken place during the early years of the century. Arrangements of madrigals by Marenzio and Lassus and original works by Sweelinck, organist of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, were included in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book; and even more significantly, Bull, Peter Philips and other Catholic recusants found refuge in the Netherlands and elsewhere, and thus spread abroad the advanced English keyboard techniques. Sweelinck himself was much influenced by the innovations, as can be seen not only from his harpsichord works, but also from his organ variations on Lutheran chorales and his echo-fantasias that exploit the dynamic contrast between one manual and another. Although none of his keyboard works appeared in print, Sweelinck’s fame as the foremost teacher in northern Europe brought him numerous pupils, particularly from the neighbouring parts of Germany. The latest techniques were thus passed on to a younger generation of composers, who in their turn carried them still farther afield.
German composers of the period may conveniently be divided into two groups: those who worked in the Protestant north and centre; and those of the Catholic south, including Austria. To the former group belong Sweelinck’s pupils, Scheidt and Scheidemann. Scheidt’s keyboard works were issued in two collections, the Tabulatura nova (1624) and the Tabulatur-Buch hundert geistlicher Lieder und Psalmen (1650). (In the first of these the description ‘new’ refers to the use of open score in place of letter notation.) The organ pieces cover a wide range, for in addition to the forms used by Sweelinck they include fugues and canons as well as plainchant settings for use during the Catholic liturgy. The later volume consists of simple four-part settings of Lutheran chorales for accompanying unison singing. One of the sets of variations for harpsichord is based on the English song Fortune my Foe, which was also set by Sweelinck, Byrd and Tomkins. Scheidemann’s works, like those of most northerners, remained unpublished. The majority are organ settings of chorales in which the borrowed melody is either left plain, ornamented, treated in motet style, or (more rarely) used as a theme for variations. The most outstanding of all the northerners was, however, Buxtehude, who left his native Denmark in 1668 to become organist of the Marienkirche in Lübeck. His organ preludes and fugues are not unlike toccatas, for they often contain two quite distinct fugal sections in addition to brilliant flourishes and sustained passages. He also wrote numerous chorale settings of various kinds, even including a set of variations on Auf meinen lieben Gott in the form of a dance suite. Some of the works are for manuals only, but the majority make full use of the pedals. Although Buxtehude was primarily an organ composer, the publication in 1941 of the Ryge Manuscript (DK-Kk C.11.49.4°) made available his suites and variations for clavichord or harpsichord; these are so similar in style to those of Nicolas-Antoine Lebègue that the editor did not notice the inclusion of one of Lebègue’s suites in the Buxtehude manuscript.
The earliest and most significant German composer of the south was Froberger, who, though born in Stuttgart, held the post of court organist in Vienna for 20 years. His ricercares, canzonas and fantasias are strongly influenced by his master, Frescobaldi, but his toccatas are less Italian in style. Although they begin with the usual sustained chords and brilliant flourishes (ex.4), they generally include two fugal sections on rhythmic variants of a single subject, each section being rounded off with further flourishes. His suites are in an expressive, romantic vein better suited to the clavichord than to the harpsichord. They are French in style, and are said to have been the first to establish the basic suite pattern of four contrasted national dances: i.e. an allemande (German), courante (French) or corrente (Italian), sarabande (Spanish) and gigue or jig (English). In Froberger’s autographs the gigue either precedes the saraband or is omitted altogether; but when the works were published posthumously (Amsterdam, c1697) the order was changed (‘mis en meilleur ordre’) and the gigue placed at the end. During the last ten years of his life Froberger travelled widely in Germany, France, the Netherlands and England, meeting Chambonnières and Louis Couperin in Paris and Christopher Gibbons (son of Orlando) in London; thus he too played a significant part in the cross-fertilization of national styles.
Among the lesser southerners were Alessandro Poglietti, Georg Muffat and J.C.F. Fischer. Although Poglietti was probably an Italian, he became court organist in Vienna shortly after Froberger, and in 1677 presented Leopold I and his empress with an autograph collection of his harpsichord pieces entitled Rossignolo. Besides a ricercare, a capriccio and an Aria bizarra, all based on the Rossignolo theme, it includes a virtuoso ‘imitation of the same bird’, and an Aria allemagna with 20 variations. Each of the latter has an illustrative title (‘Bohemian Bagpipes’, ‘Dutch Flute’, ‘Old Woman’s Funeral’, ‘Hungarian Fiddles’ etc.), and in number they match the age of the empress, to whom they were dedicated. Muffat’s Apparatus musico-organisticus (1690) contains 12 organ toccatas with elementary pedal parts, and four harpsichord pieces of which the large-scale Passacaglia in G minor and the shorter Ciacona in G have a power and breadth more typical of the north than of the south. In contrast to these, the four collections by Fischer are wholly southern in their delicacy of feeling. Les pièces de clavessin (1696) and the Musicalischer Parnassus (1738) are devoted to harpsichord suites, each of which begins with a prelude of some sort and continues with a group of dances or other pieces, not always including the usual allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue. The other two volumes, Ariadne musica (1702) and Blumen Strauss (1732), contain miniature preludes and fugues for organ. The Ariadne group interestingly foreshadows Bach’s Das wohltemperirte Clavier in the wide range of its key scheme, and even in some of its themes (Fischer’s eighth fugue in E obviously inspired Bach’s ninth from book 2).
In Italy the main centre for keyboard music moved from Venice to Naples and then to Rome. From Ascanio Mayone’s Diversi capricci (1603 and 1609) and G.M. Trabaci’s Ricercate (1603 and 1615) it can be seen that although the Neapolitans retained the strict contrapuntal style of the Gabrielis in their ricercares, they broke new ground in toccatas by shortening the sections, increasing their number and heightening the contrast between one section and the next. The same distinction was made by Frescobaldi, who, as organist of the basilica of S Pietro in Rome, was the most widely acclaimed player and keyboard composer of the day. Although he visited the Netherlands in 1607, when the 45-year-old Sweelinck was at the height of his powers, he was little influenced by the techniques of the north. His works were published during the next 35 years in a series of ten volumes of which some are revised and enlarged editions of others. The three definitive collections are Il primo libro di capricci, canzon francese, e recercari (1626) and the Toccate d’intavolatura di cimbalo et organo with its sequel Il secondo libro di toccate (both 1637). (The first two contain important prefaces by the composer concerning interpretation.) Most of the toccatas, capriccios and canzonas in these collections are equally suited to harpsichord and organ, for though some have a primitive pedal part, it generally consists of no more than long-held notes that are already present in the left hand. The works intended primarily for harpsichord include dances (sometimes grouped in threes, with the opening balletto serving as theme for the following corrente and passacaglia), and sets of variations or partitas, a number of which are based on harmonic patterns such as the romanesca and the Ruggiero. The ricercares and plainchant pieces are essentially organ music, as in the liturgical Fiori musicali (1635), of which Bach possessed a manuscript copy.
One of the few 17th-century Italian publications devoted wholly to dances was Giovanni Picchi’s Intavolatura di balli d’arpicordo (1621). Besides the customary passamezzo, saltarello and padoana (pavan), it includes imitations of alien idioms such as a ‘Ballo alla polacha’, a ‘Ballo ongaro’ and a ‘Todesca’. The corantos in Michelangelo Rossi’s Toccate e correnti d’intavolatura d’organo e cimbalo (1630s) are in a lighter, more tuneful style, though his toccatas are still closely related to Frescobaldi’s. This new style can be seen even more clearly in the works of Bernardo Pasquini, who was among the first to apply the title ‘sonata’ to solo keyboard music. Originally it denoted no more than a ‘sound piece’ as opposed to a ‘sung piece’ or ‘cantata’, for it was applied indiscriminately to toccatas, fugues, airs, dances and suites. But Pasquini, following the example of Corelli’s ensemble sonatas, also gave the title to solos in more than a single movement. Among his other works are 15 sonatas for two harpsichords, in which each part consists rather oddly of no more than a figured bass (GB-Lbl Add.31501). The 40-odd toccatas of Alessandro Scarlatti are of interest mainly because each contains at least one moto perpetuo section, thus anticipating the much later moto perpetuo type of toccata.
Much French keyboard music of the 17th century appeared in print while the composers were still alive; and as the title-pages generally specified either organ or harpsichord, but not both, there is rarely any doubt about the instrument intended. A manuscript dated 1618 (GB-Lbl Add.29486, probably from the Catholic Netherlands), however, contains over 100 short pieces in the church modes, all anonymous apart from G. Gabrieli’s 12 intonazioni. They include preludes, fugae and alternatim settings of the Mass, Magnificat and Te Deum, all simple enough technically for parochial use. More sophisticated are Titelouze’s Hymnes de l’église pour toucher sur l’orgue (1623) and Le Magnificat … suivant les huits tons de l’église (1626), the first French keyboard publications devoted to the works of a single composer. The earlier volume contains settings of 12 plainchant hymns, each consisting of three or four versets for which the plainchant provides either a cantus firmus or several short themes for treatment in contrapuntal motet style. The eight Magnificat settings of the second volume, though also in motet style, are more adventurous harmonically. Titelouze was essentially conservative, however, and his strict polyphonic idiom attracted no immediate disciples. More typically French are the many Livres d’orgue issued during the second half of the century by composers such as Guillaume Nivers, Nicolas-Antoine Lebègue, Nicolas Gigault, André Raison and Jacques Boyvin. They mostly contain short pieces which, though still in the church modes and intended for use during the liturgy, are fairly simple in style and often unabashedly tuneful. As was customary in France, though not elsewhere, the registration is often indicated in the title, for instance ‘Récit de nazard’ or ‘Basse de cromorne’. Also typical is the frequent use of contrasted manuals heard either simultaneously or in alternation. Lebègue was the first Frenchman to exploit the pedals fully, for generally they were either optional or omitted altogether.
The mid-century saw the emergence of the distinctive French harpsichord idiom that exercised a potent influence throughout Europe. In essence it was based on the richly ornamented and arpeggiated textures of lute music. The founder of the school was Chambonnières, who late in life published two books of Pièces de clavessin (1670) containing 60 dances grouped according to key. The commonest types are allemandes, courantes (often in sets of three) and sarabandes; occasionally a gigue or some other dance is added. More of his pieces survive in the Bauyn Manuscript (F-Pn Res.Vm7.674–5), which also contains almost all the compositions of his pupil Louis Couperin, the one outstanding French keyboard composer who never saw any of his own works in print. In addition to the forms used by his master, Couperin wrote a number of ‘unmeasured preludes’ of a type peculiar to France. Another pupil of Chambonnières was Jean-Henri D’Anglebert, whose Pièces de clavecin were published in 1689. The volume is unusual in two respects, for it includes five fugues for organ, and 15 of its 60 harpsichord pieces are arrangements of movements from operas by Lully. D’Anglebert’s magnificent Tombeau de Mr. de Chambonnières is a good example for keyboard of a type of memorial composition of which French composers have always been specially fond.
Keyboard music, §I: Keyboard music to c1750
All the forms employed during the 17th century remained in use during the first half of the 18th; but sonatas (of other than the classical type) acquired increasing importance, and ritornello form (derived from the Neapolitan operatic aria) provided the foundation on which every concerto and many extended solo movements were built.
French keyboard composers were untouched by these developments, however, and continued to confine themselves to dances and genre pieces for harpsichord, and to short liturgical and secular works for the organ. The two outstanding figures among them were Louis Couperin’s nephew François Couperin the younger and Jean-Philippe Rameau, a near-contemporary of Bach. François Couperin’s four books of Pièces de clavecin (1713–30) are the crowning achievement of the French clavecin school. The 220 pieces range from elegant trifles to the majestic Passacaille in B minor (ordre no.8) and the sombre allemande La ténébreuse (ordre no.3), which is almost too intense in mood for the dance form in which it is embodied. Two organ masses, written at the age of 21, are sufficiently unlike the mature works to have been attributed at one time to his father, François the elder. Couperin’s views on teaching, interpretation, ornamentation and fingering are set forth in his L’art de toucher le clavecin (1716, 2/1717), a fascinating treatise which nevertheless often fails to answer questions that remain puzzling. Rameau’s instructions to the player are contained in two of the prefaces to his four books of harpsichord pieces issued between 1706 and 1741 (he wrote nothing for organ). The works are generally simpler in texture and less richly ornamented than Couperin’s, but more adventurous harmonically and in their use of the keyboard. The composer himself noted that it would take time and application to appreciate the (harmonic) beauty of parts of the piece entitled L’enharmonique; and he provided fingering for the widely spaced left-hand figure in Les cyclopes because of its unusual difficulty. Rameau’s final keyboard publication, Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741), is primarily a collection of five suites for violin, bass viol and harpsichord, but it also includes a solo harpsichord version of four of the movements. This practical plan was anticipated, though in reverse, in Gaspard Le Roux’s Pièces de clavessin (1705). There the main works are suites for harpsichord solo, while the arrangements consist of selected movements for trio (instruments unspecified), and several for two harpsichords, the latter being the earliest known French works for that medium. Composers other than Couperin who wrote for both harpsichord and organ include Louis Marchand, L.-N. Clérambault, J.-F. Dandrieu, Dagincourt and Daquin. Most of their works are in the customary forms; but the organ volumes by Dandrieu (1715) and Daquin (c1740) are devoted to sets of variations on popular Christmas melodies, entitled ‘noëls’, a type which first appeared in Lebègue’s Troisième livre d’orgue (c1685).
One of the greatest of all harpsichord composers was the Italian Domenico Scarlatti, son of Alessandro and exact contemporary of Bach and Handel. The last 35 years of his life were spent in the service of Maria Barbara of Braganza, at first in Portugal and later in Spain; during that period he appears to have written almost all his 555 single-movement sonatas. Apart from a volume of 30 Essercizi per gravicembalo (1738), published under his own supervision, the main sources of his works are two contemporary manuscript collections (I-Vnm 9770–84; and I-PAp AG 31406–20), the first of which was copied for his royal patron. Their contents are similar but not identical, and it has been suggested by Ralph Kirkpatrick (Domenico Scarlatti, Princeton, 1953) that the order of their contents is to a large extent chronological, and that more than two-thirds of the sonatas were, as the manuscripts indicate, originally grouped in pairs, or sometimes in threes, according to key (this order is retained in Kirkpatrick’s facsimile, New York and London, 1972, and in Kenneth Gilbert’s excellent complete edition, Paris, 1971–84). Although Scarlatti rarely used any structure other than binary form, and seldom aimed at emotional extremes, he achieved an astonishing variety within those self-imposed limits. Moreover, he exploited the keyboard in ways never imagined by any of his contemporaries. In the later works he virtually abandoned his wilder flights of hand-crossing; but he never lost his command of both sparkling brilliance and an unexpected vein of reflective melancholy, his delight in technical and harmonic experiment, and his love for the sounds and rhythms of the popular music of Spain. Five of the sonatas (k254–5, 287–8 and 328) are for two-manual chamber organ without pedals, and some others are not unsuited to a single-manual organ; but by far the greater number are essentially harpsichord works. (Among the harpsichords possessed by his royal patron, however, none of those with more than two registers appear to have had the full five-octave compass required by some of the sonatas.)
Scarlatti’s followers in Portugal and Spain, among whom were Seixas and Antonio Soler, wrote numerous single-movement sonatas similar in style to his own; but as an expatriate he exercised little influence on Italian composers, whose sonatas are of several different types. Those by Della Ciaia (1727) are not unlike sectional toccatas; Francesco Durante’s (c1732) each contain a studio in imitative counterpoint followed by a brilliant divertimento; Benedetto Marcello’s (manuscript) are in either three or four movements; and Zipoli’s (1716) include liturgical and secular pieces for organ as well as suites and variations for harpsichord. Also intended for either instrument are G.B. Martini’s two volumes of sonatas (1742, 1747), the first devoted to two- and three-movement works, and the second to five-movement works that combine features of both the sonata da camera and the sonata da chiesa.
English keyboard composers during the post-Purcell period rarely rose above a level of honest competence. Tuneful airs and lessons, sometimes grouped into suites, appeared in serial anthologies such as The Harpsichord Master (1697–1734) and The Ladys Banquet (1704–35), among whose contributors were Jeremiah Clarke, William Croft and Maurice Greene. In addition, separate volumes were devoted to works by Philip Hart, Clarke, Thomas Roseingrave and Greene. Although Croft was not accorded that distinction, he was the most accomplished composer of the group and the only one to come within hailing distance of Purcell. Indeed, the Ground from his Suite no.3 in C minor is actually ascribed to Purcell in one source. Collections of fugues and/or voluntaries were issued by Hart, Roseingrave, Greene, Boyce and John Stanley. Although described as being ‘for the organ or harpsichord’, these are best suited to the organ. The early voluntaries consist of a single movement, generally contrapuntal in texture, while the later tend to be in two movements (slow–fast), of which the second is often a fugue. Outstanding among them are the three volumes containing Stanley’s 30 voluntaries, in some of which the number of movements is increased to three or four.
A Scarlatti cult was at one time fostered in England, first by Roseingrave’s edition of XLII suites de pièces pour le clavecin (1739), which added 12 more Scarlatti sonatas to the 30 published a year earlier in the Essercizi; and secondly by Charles Avison’s arrangement of a number of the sonatas as Twelve Concertos (1744) for strings and continuo.
Of far greater significance to English musical life, however, was the arrival of Handel, who settled in London in 1712 after a successful visit two years earlier. Although at first occupied mainly with Italian opera and later with oratorio, he was obliged to publish his [8] Suites de pièces pour le clavecin (1720) in order to counteract the many ‘surrepticious and incorrect copies’ that were circulating in manuscript. Other collections of his pieces, all unauthorized, appeared later in London and Amsterdam. Some of the suites follow the normal pattern of allemande–courante–sarabande–gigue; but more often they include italianate allegros, fugues, andantes and so on, or consist of nothing else. His keyboard works combine relaxed informality with masterly rhetoric in a way that doubtless reflects the improvisations for which he was famous; this is particularly noticeable in the 14 or 15 concertos for organ, a medium he invented for use during the intervals at his oratorio performances. In many of them the soloist is expected to improvise long sections (even whole movements) where his part is marked ‘ad lib’. This would have been a perfectly simple matter for Handel himself, but it does pose problems for other players. Most of the works require an orchestra of no more than strings and oboes, and as all but one are for organ without pedals, the title-pages describe them as being ‘for organ or harpsichord’. Among his English successors as composers of organ and/or harpsichord concertos were T.A. Arne, Thomas Chilcot, William Felton, Philip Hayes and John Stanley, whose op.2 string concertos were also issued in a keyboard version.
Meanwhile in Germany the way had been prepared for the greatest of all pre-classical keyboard composers, J.S. Bach. Among his many musical ancestors, other than relatives, the most significant was Buxtehude (see above), whose organ toccatas and chorale fantasias, and highly developed pedal technique, provided foundations on which Bach could build. So great was Bach’s reverence for Buxtehude that in 1705 he walked the distance from Arnstadt to Lübeck in order to hear his Abendmusiken – the yearly choral and instrumental performances given on the five Sundays before Christmas. Somewhat less influential were Pachelbel, Kuhnau and Georg Böhm. Nevertheless, Pachelbel’s chorale preludes, published in 1683 and 1693, were the forerunners of one important type used by Bach. In this, each successive phrase of the borrowed melody is treated in diminution to provide the theme for a short fughetta, towards whose conclusion the phrase itself appears as a cantus firmus. The keyboard works of Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, include two notable volumes: firstly, the Frische Clavier Früchte, oder sieben Suonaten (1696), the earliest publication in which the title ‘sonata’ is given to a solo as distinct from an ensemble work; and secondly, [6] Musicalische Vorstellungen einiger biblischer Historien (1700), the ‘musical representations of biblical stories’ that provided the model for Bach’s early Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo bwv992. The influence of Böhm, though conjectural, would have been earlier and more direct, for he was organist of the Johanniskirche in Lüneburg when Bach was a choirboy at the nearby Michaeliskirche. Böhm’s organ partitas (variations on chorales) and sensitive suites in the French style for clavichord or harpsichord were unpublished, but the evidence of Bach’s own works suggests that he must have been familiar with them as a boy.
A near-contemporary of Bach and Handel, and a friend of both, was the prolific Telemann. The admiration of the two slightly younger men for his music can best be understood by reference to works such as the XX kleine Fugen (1731). Although these miniature keyboard fugues are based on the church modes (which were then virtually obsolete), and though they are quite small in scale, each one establishes unerringly a mood as precise as its structure.
Comparatively few of Bach’s own keyboard works were published during his lifetime. The most comprehensive collection, the Clavier-Übung, was issued in four parts between 1731 and 1742, of which the first, second and fourth contain compositions for both single and double-manual harpsichord, while the third is mainly devoted to the organ.
Of
Bach’s total output of over 250 organ works, more than two-thirds are based on
chorales. They range from the early sets of Partite diverse bwv766–8, in the style of Böhm, to mature chorale preludes of
every type. From the Weimar period come the 46 preludes of the Orgel-Büchlein,
‘wherein the beginner may learn to perform chorales of every kind and also
acquire skill in the use of the pedals’. In most of them a single, continuous
statement of the melody, either plain or ornamented, is supported by an
accompaniment whose figuration either symbolizes the words or intensifies the
mood of the hymn concerned. They are generally small in scale; yet some of the
settings, such as the richly embellished O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde gross
bwv622, can be numbered among Bach’s profoundest
utterances. The third part of the Clavier-Übung, from the Leipzig
period, contains 21 preludes based on the Catechism and other hymns, of which
the six that illustrate the Catechism are set twice – elaborately for two
manuals and pedals, and more simply for manuals only. Four quite unconnected
keyboard Duettos bwv802–5 are also included in part 3;
and the whole volume is framed by the magnificent Prelude and Fugue in E
bwv552,
known in England as the ‘St Anne’. During the same period Bach published the
recondite [5] Canonische Veränderungen über das Weynacht-Lied ‘Vom Himmel
hoch’ bwv769, which, as Schweitzer wrote, ‘pack into
a single chorale the whole art of canon’. He also virtually completed the
revision of 18 large-scale chorale preludes, mostly written originally in
Weimar; but failing health and eyesight forced him to abandon dictating the
last of them, Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit bwv668,
whose ending luckily is known from other sources. Earlier chorale preludes
include 24 copied by his pupil Kirnberger, 28 from various other manuscripts,
and a set of six published by Schübler (c1746), five of which are
arrangements of movements from cantatas.
In almost all of Bach’s other organ music, none of which was published, fugue is an essential element. From the beginning of the Weimar period, or even earlier, come four immature and fairly small-scale preludes and fugues bwv531–3 and 535 and two much finer toccatas in C and D minor bwv564–5, all written under Buxtehude’s influence. Increasing mastery and individuality is apparent in four later Weimar works – the preludes and fugues in F minor and A bwv534 and 536, the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor bwv537 and the Toccata and Fugue in F bwv540, with its tremendous pedal solos. The finest of all the fugal works are, however, the ten written either during or just before the Leipzig period. They include the Fantasia and Fugue in G minor bwv542, the Prelude (or Toccata) and Fugue in D minor bwv538, known as the ‘Dorian’, and the six magnificent preludes and fugues bwv543–8, which are Bach’s crowning achievements in this form.
The great Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor bwv582 and the six trio sonatas bwv525–30 far transcend their original purpose as instructional works for Bach’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. They are described merely as being ‘for two manuals and pedals’, so it remains uncertain whether they were intended primarily for organ or for a harpsichord fitted with a pedal-board (such as could be used by organists for home practice).
Much of Bach’s music for normal harpsichord and/or clavichord was also didactic in aim. The 15 two-part inventions and 15 three-part sinfonias bwv772–801 were first included in a manuscript collection of keyboard pieces for Wilhelm Friedemann dated 1720, and were described in a revision of 1723 as showing not only how ‘to play clearly in two voices but also, after further progress, to deal correctly and well with three obbligato parts … and above all to achieve a singing style in playing’. Friedemann’s book also contained early versions of 11 of the preludes from the first book of Das wohltemperirte Clavier (1722), a more advanced collection of 24 preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys ‘for the use and profit of young musicians desiring to learn, as well as for the pastime of those already skilled in this study’. The second book, containing a further 24 preludes and fugues, was not completed until 1744. Two other manuscripts, dated respectively 1722 and 1725, were compiled for the use of Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena. The first contains five of the six French suites bwv812–17, each consisting of the usual allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, with one or more additional dances (Galanterien) following the sarabande. The six so-called ‘English’ suites bwv806–11 and six partitas bwv825–30 are on a larger scale, for each begins with a prelude of some sort. Those of the English suites (with the exception of no.1) are ritornello-type movements, while those of the partitas are in various forms. The partitas were published singly between 1726 and 1730, and complete in 1731 as part 1 of the Clavier-Übung, of which part 2 (1735) consists of the Italian Concerto bwv971 and the French Overture bwv831 (sometimes known as the Partita in B minor), both for two-manual harpsichord. Part 4 (1742), also for two-manual harpsichord, is devoted to a single work: the monumental Aria with 30 Variations bwv988, usually known as the Goldberg Variations, which Tovey described as ‘not only thirty miracles of variation-form, but … a single miracle of consummate art as a whole composition’.
Slightly later in date is the Musical Offering bwv1079, a collection of fugues, canons etc. for various instruments on a theme provided by Frederick the Great. It includes two ricercares for solo keyboard, of which the second, in six parts, was originally printed in open score. This was not an unusual method of presenting keyboard music when its aim was partly didactic. It was used again for Bach’s posthumous Art of Fugue bwv1080, in which the majority of the fugues are clearly intended for solo keyboard, though they have frequently been arranged for various ensembles in the 20th century.
During the Weimar period Bach made solo keyboard versions, some for organ and others for harpsichord, of 22 concertos by various composers, including Vivaldi, Marcello and Telemann. These paved the way for his later concertos for solo harpsichord and strings bwv1052–8, which were the first of their kind (and roughly contemporary with Handel’s organ concertos). All seven are arrangements of earlier concertos of his own – mostly for solo violin and strings – several of which have not survived. The only original keyboard work in this form appears to be the Concerto in C for two harpsichords and strings bwv1061; the remaining two for the same medium, and those for three and four harpsichords and strings, are also arrangements of concertos originally by either Bach himself or other composers such as Vivaldi.
In its depth and range of emotion, contrapuntal skill and perfection of design, Bach’s keyboard music far surpasses that of any of his contemporaries or predecessors; yet by the time of his death it was generally regarded as old-fashioned. The contrapuntal style was beginning to seem outmoded, and the harpsichord and clavichord were beginning to make way for the fortepiano, which combined the power of the one with the sensitivity of the other. The gradual change can be seen in the works of three of Bach’s sons. The eldest, Wilhelm Friedemann, still wrote some fugues; but, like his polonaises and three-movement sonatas, they were in the new empfindsamer Stil, of which his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel was the chief exponent. Philipp Emanuel’s numerous sonatas, fantasias, rondos etc., embodying the violent dynamic contrasts typical of the style, were immensely influential; and his book, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753–62), was the most important treatise of its day. The youngest brother, Johann Christian, was a less original composer; nevertheless, his italianate sonatas and concertos in the galant style gained great popularity in England, where he settled in 1761. And there it was that he met and befriended the eight-year-old Mozart, when that astonishing boy visited London in 1764–5.
Keyboard music, §I: Keyboard music to c1750
a: lists of sources and compositions
d: germany, austria and poland
f: the netherlands, belgium and france
Keyboard music, §I: Keyboard music to c1750: Bibliography
Grove6 (‘Keyboard music: bibliography’; J. Caldwell) [incl. list of edns]
B. Weigl: Handbuch der Orgelliteratur (Leipzig, 1931)
W.S. Newman: ‘A Checklist of the Earliest Keyboard “Sonatas” (1641–1738)’, Notes, xi (1953–4), 201–12
J. Friskin and I. Freundlich: Music for the Piano … from 1580 to 1952 (New York, 1954/R)
H. Alker: Literatur für alte Tasteninstrumente: Wiener Abhandlungen zur Musikwissenschaft und Instrumentalkunde (Vienna, 1962)
K. Wolters: Handbuch der Klavierliteratur (Zürich, 1967)
C.R. Arnold: Organ Literature: a Comprehensive Survey (Metuchen, NJ, 1973)
M. Hinson: Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire, ed. I. Freundlich (Bloomington, IN, 1973) [comprehensive bibliography]
H. Ferguson: Keyboard Interpretation (London, 1975)
B. Gustafson: French Harpsichord Music of the 17th Century (Ann Arbor, 1979)
A.J. Arenson and S. Williams: The Harpsichord Booke: being a Plaine & Simple Index to Printed Collections of Musick by Different Masters for the Harpsichord, Spinnet, Clavichord & Virginall (Madison, WI, 1986)
W.F. Dassinger: ‘An Index of Organ Music up to 1750 Based on Plainsong’, JMR, vi (1986), 95–170
C. Johnson: Keyboard Intabulations Preserved in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century German Organ Tablatures: a Catalogue and Commentary (diss., U. of Oxford, 1986)
B. Gustafson and D.R. Fuller: A Catalogue of French Harpsichord Music 1699–1780 (New York, 1990)
A. Heinrich: Organ and Harpsichord Music by Women Composers: an Annotated Catalog (Westport, CT, 1991)
S.J. Sloane: Music for Two or More Players at Clavichord, Harpsichord, Organ: an Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT, 1991)
V. Brookes: British Keyboard Music to c. 1660: Sources and Thematic Index (Oxford, 1996)
Keyboard music, §I: Keyboard music to c1750: Bibliography
ApelG
FrotscherG
MGG1 (‘Klaviermusik’, W. Apel, K. von Fischer; ‘Orgelmusik’, F.W. Riedel, T.M. Laquer)
ReeseMR
A.G. Ritter: Zur Geschichte des Orgelspiels (Leipzig, 1884/R)
M. Seiffert: Geschichte der Klaviermusik (Leipzig, 1899/R)
O. Kinkeldey: Orgel und Klavier in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1910/R)
A. Pirro: ‘L’art des organistes’, EMDC, II/ii (1926), 1181–359
K.G. Fellerer: Orgel und Orgelmusik: ihre Geschichte (Augsburg, 1929)
G. Schünemann: Geschichte der Klaviermusik (Berlin, 1940)
G.S. Bedbrook: Keyboard Music from the Middle Ages to the Beginnings of the Baroque (London, 1949/R)
L. Hoffmann-Erbrecht: Deutsche und italienische Klavier-Musik zur Bach-Zeit (Leipzig, 1954)
A.E.F. Dickinson: ‘A Forgotten Collection’ [D-Bsb Ly.A1 and A2], MR, xvii (1956), 97–109
F.W. Riedel: Quellenkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der Musik für Tasteninstrumente in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1960, 2/1990)
Y. Rokseth: ‘The Instrumental Music of the Middle Ages and Early 16th Century’, NOHM, iii (1960), 406–65
W. Young: ‘Keyboard Music in 1600’, MD, xvi (1962), 115–50; xvii (1963), 163–93
A.E.F. Dickinson: ‘The Lübbenau Keyboard Books’ [D-Bsb Ly.A1 and A2], MR, xxvii (1966), 270–86
W. Apel: ‘Solo Instrumental Music’, NOHM, iv (1968), 602–708
W.R. Denison: Recitative in Baroque Keyboard Music (diss., Florida State U., 1969)
M. Kugler: Die Musik für Tasteninstrumente im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Wilhelmshaven, 1975)
J.R. Shannon: Organ Literature of the Seventeenth Century: a Study of its Styles (Raleigh, NC, 1978)
O. Schumann: Handbuch der Klaviermusik: Konzert- und Hausmusik vom 16. Jahrhundert bis heute (Munich, 1982)
K. Wolff: Masters of the Keyboard: Individual Style Elements in the Piano Music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert (Bloomington, IN, 1983)
C.R. Arnold: Organ Literature: a Comprehensive Survey (Metuchen, NJ, 1984)
N. del C. Fernandez: ‘Music for Two Keyboards: Prior to the Advent of the Piano’, Piano Quarterly, xxxiv (1986), 41–5
P. Gradenwitz: Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Klaviermusik (Munich, 1986)
H. Klotz: Über die Orgelkunst der Gotik, Renaissance und Barok (Kassel, 1986)
W. Apel: Collected Articles and Reviews, iii: Early European Keyboard Music (Stuttgart, 1989)
P. Hollfelder: Geschichte der Klaviermusik: historische Entwicklungen, Komponisten mit Biographien und Werkverzeichnissen, nationale Schulen (Wilhelmshaven, 1989)
The Harpsichord and its Repertoire: Utrecht 1990
J. Viret: ‘La musique d’orgue au XVIe siècle: état actuel des éditions’, Orgue francophone, ix–x (1990–91), 6–18, 10–27
M. Ladenburger, ed.: Beiträge zu Orgelbau und Orgelmusik in Oberschwaben im 18. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1991)
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W. Niemann: Die Virginalmusik (Leipzig, 1919)
M. Glyn: About Elizabethan Virginal Music and its Composers (London, 1924, enlarged 2/1934)
L. Neudenberger: Die Variationstechnik der Virginalisten im Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (Berlin, 1937)
R. Donington and T. Dart: ‘The Origin of the English In Nomine’, ML, xxx (1949), 101–6
G. Reese: ‘The Origin of the English “In Nomine”’, JAMS, ii (1949), 7–22
D. Stevens: The Mulliner Book: a Commentary (London, 1952)
E.E. Lowinsky: ‘English Organ Music of the Renaissance’, MQ, xxxix (1953), 373–95, 528–53
T. Dart: ‘New Sources of Virginal Music’, ML, xxxv (1954), 93–106
J.L. Boston: ‘Priscilla Bunbury’s Virginal Book’, ML, xxxvi (1955), 365–73
H.J. Steele: English Organs and Organ Music from 1500–1650 (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1958)
R.L. Adams: The Development of Keyboard Music in England during the English Renaissance (diss., U. of Washington, 1960)
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J.A. Caldwell: British Museum Add.MS 29996 (diss., U. of Oxford, 1965)
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H.D. Johnstone: ‘An Unknown Book of Organ Voluntaries’, MT, cviii (1967), 1003–7
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A. Curtis: Sweelinck’s Keyboard Works: a Study of English Elements in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Composition (London and Leiden, 1969, 2/1972)
M.C. Maas: Seventeenth-Century English Keyboard Music: a Study of Manuscripts Rés. 1185, 1186 and 1186 bis of the Paris Conservatory Library (diss., Yale U., 1969)
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R. Petre: ‘A New Piece by Henry Purcell’, EMc, vi (1978), 374–9
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J.A. Caldwell: ‘The Influence of German Composers on English Keyboard Music in the Seventeenth Century’, Deutsch-englische Musikbeziehungen: Nuremburg 1980, 39–50
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R. Lunelli: L’arte organaria del Rinascimento in Roma (Florence, 1958)
J.F. Monroe: Italian Keyboard Music in the Interim between Frescobaldi and Pasquini (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1959)
B. Hudson: A Portuguese Source of Seventeenth-Century Iberian Organ Music (diss., Indiana U., 1961)
H. Anglès: ‘Die Instrumentalmusik bis zum 16. Jahrhundert in Spanien’, Natalicia musicologica Knud Jeppesen septuagenario collegis oblata, ed. B. Hjelmborg and S. Sørenson (Copenhagen, 1962), 143–64
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R. Hudson: The Development of Italian Keyboard Variations on the Passacaglio and Ciaccona from Guitar Music in the Seventeenth Century (diss., UCLA, 1967)
M. Kugler: Die Tastenmusik im Codex Faenza (Tutzing, 1972)
G. Doderer: Orgelmusik und Orgelbau im Portugal des 17. Jahrhunderts: Untersuchungen an Hand des MS 964 der Biblioteca Publica in Braga (Tutzing, 1978)
J.L. Ladewig: Frescobaldi’s ‘Recercari et Canzoni Franzese’ (1615): a Study of the Contrapuntal Keyboard Idiom in Ferrara, Naples and Rome, 1580–1620 (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1978)
A. Silbiger: Italian Manuscript Sources of 17th Century Keyboard Music (Ann Arbor, 1980)
A. Silbiger: ‘The Roman Frescobaldi Tradition, c.1640–1670’, JAMS, xxxiii (1980), 42–87
M. van Daalen and F. Harrison: ‘Two Keyboard Intabulations of the Late Fourteenth Century on a Manuscript Leaf now in the Netherlands’, TVNM, xxxiv (1984), 97–108
J. Clement: ‘La musica española para teclo en el siglo XVIII’, RdMc, viii (1985), 15–21
B.M. Nelson: The Integration of Spanish and Portuguese Organ Music Within the Liturgy from the Latter Half of the Sixteenth Century to the Eighteenth Century (diss., U. of Oxford, 1986)
G. Doderer: ‘Algunos aspectos nuevos de la musica para clavecin en la corte Lisboeta de Juan V’, Musica antiqua, viii (1987), 26–31
G. Galvez: ‘Aspectos ornamentales en la musica española para tecla del siglo XVIII’, Musica antiqua, vii (1987), 11–16; viii (1987), 23–4
R.F. Judd: The Use of Notational Formats at the Keyboard: a Study of Printed Sources of Keyboard Music in Spain and Italy c.1500–1700, Selected Manuscript Sources Including Music by Claudio Merulo, and Contemporary Writings Concerning Notations (diss., U. of Oxford, 1989)
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C. Johnson, ed.: Historical Organ Techniques and Repertoire: an Historical Survey of Organ Performance Practices and Repertoire, i: Spain, 1550–1830 (Boston, 1994)
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C. van den Borren: Les origines de la musique de clavier dans les Pays-Bas (nord et sud) jusque vers 1630 (Brussels, 1914)
Y. Rokseth: La musique d’orgue au XVe siècle et au début du XVIe (Paris, 1930)
N. Dufourcq: La musique d’orgue française de Jean Titelouze à Jehan Alain (Paris, 1941, 2/1949)
A. Curtis: Introduction to Nederlandse klaviermuziek uit de 16e en 17e eeuw, MMN, iii (1961)
T. Dart: ‘Elisabeth Eysbock’s Keyboard Book’, STMf, xliv (1962), 5–12
E. Southern: ‘Some Keyboard Basse Dances of the Fifteenth Century’, AcM, xxxv (1963), 114–24
D. Fuller: 18th-Century French Harpsichord Music (diss., Harvard U., 1965)
T.K. Brown: The French Baroque Organ Tradition: a Critical Analysis of Works by Representative Composers (diss., Florida State U., 1967)
A. Curtis: Sweelinck’s Keyboard Works: a Study of English Elements in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Composition (London and Leiden, 1969, 2/1972)
F. Peeters and M.A. Vente: De orgelkunst in de Nederlanden van de 16de tot de 18de eeuw (Antwerp, 1971)
B. Gustafson: French Harpsichord Music of the 17th Century, i–iii (Ann Arbor, 1979)
E. Higginbottom: The Liturgy and French Classical Organ Music: a Study of the Liturgical Background to Organ Music in France during the 17th and 18th Centuries (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1979)
J.P. Kitchen: Harpsichord Music of 17th-Century France, with Particular Emphasis on the Work of Louis Couperin (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1979)
G. Morche: Muster und Nachahmung: eine Untersuchung der klassischen französischen Orgelmusik (Berne, 1979)
D.J. Ledbetter: Harpsichord Music and Lute Music in Seventeenth-Century France: an Assessment of the Influence of Lute Music on Keyboard Repertoire (diss., U. of Oxford, 1985)
R.F. Bates: From Mode to Key: a Study of Seventeenth-Century French Liturgical Organ Music and Music Theory (diss., Stanford U., 1986)
P.M. Bedard: ‘Une nouvelle source pour la musique française de clavier des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: les manuscrits de Vitre’, RdM, lxxii (1986), 201–35
B. Scheibert: Jean-Henry D’Anglebert and the Seventeenth-Century Clavecin School (Bloomington, IN, 1986)
D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-Century France (London, 1987)
D.A. Maple: D’Anglebert’s Autograph Manuscript, Paris, B.N. Rés.89ter: an Examination of Compositional, Editorial, and Notational Processes in 17th-Century French Harpsichord Music (diss., U. of Chicago, 1988)
C.H. Bates: ‘French Harpsichord Music in the First Decade of the 18th Century’, EMc, xvii (1989), 184–96
H.H. Rabe: Studien zur Rondoform in der französischen Clavecinmusik zwischen Spätbarock und Frühklassik (diss., U. of Göttingen, 1989)
M. Souter: Sixteenth-Century Intabulation Processes and their Relationship to the Formation and Understanding of Sweelinck’s Keyboard Style (diss., U. of Oxford, 1990)
F. Hammond: ‘The Influence of Girolamo Frescobaldi on French Keyboard Music’, Recercare, iii (1991), 147–67
N. Sato: ‘Zur Gattung freie Komposition der nederländischen Claviermusik um die Zeit Sweelincks’, Ongakugaku, xxxviii (1992), 98–117
G.B. Stauffer: ‘Boyvin, Grigny, D’Anglebert, and Bach’s Assimilation of French Classical Organ Music’, EMc, xxi (1993), 83–4
M. Martin: ‘Preciosité, Dissimulation and le bon goût: Societal Conventions and Musical Aesthetics in 17th-Century French Harpsichord Music’, The Consort, no.51 (1995), 4–12
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I. Myrner: ‘Scandinavian Late 16th-Century Keyboard Music at the Court of Christian IV’, Livro de homenagem a Macario Santiago Kastner, ed. M.F. Cídrais Rodrígues, M. Morais and R.V. Nery (Lisbon, 1992), 205–27
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T. Norlind: ‘Zur Geschichte der Suite’, SIMG, vii (1905–6), 172–203
L. Schrade: Die ältesten Denkmäler der Orgelmusik als Beitrag zu einer Geschichte der Toccata (Munster, 1928)
E. Valentin: Die Entwicklung der Tokkata im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert bis J.S. Bach (Munich, 1930)
E. Epstein: Der französische Einfluss auf die deutsche Klavier-Suite im 17. Jahrhundert (Würzburg, 1940)
J.L. Hibberd: The Early Keyboard Prelude (diss., Harvard U., 1940)
M. Reimann: Untersuchungen zur Formgeschichte der französischen Klavier-Suite (Regensburg, 1941)
L. Schrade: ‘The Organ in the Mass of the 15th Century’, MQ, xxviii (1942), 329–36, 467–87
R. Murphy: Fantasia and Ricercare in the Sixteenth Century (diss., Yale U., 1954)
S. Podolsky: The Variation Canzona for Keyboard Instruments in Italy, Austria and Southern Germany in the Seventeenth Century (diss., Boston U., 1954)
I. Horsley: ‘The 16th Century Variation’, JAMS, xii (1959), 118–32
F.M. Siebert: Fifteenth-Century Organ Settings of the Ordinarium Missae (diss., Columbia U., 1961)
H.C. Slim: The Keyboard Ricecar and Fantasia in Italy, ca. 1500–1550, with Reference to Parallel Forms in European Lute Music of the Same Period (diss., Harvard U., 1961)
R.S. Douglass: The Keyboard Ricercar in the Baroque Era (diss., U. of North Texas, 1963)
G.H. Farndell: The Development of Organ Magnificat Settings Found in Representative German Composers between 1450 and 1750 (diss., U. of Michigan, 1966)
C. Cannon: The 16th- and 17th Century Organ Mass: a Study in Musical Style (diss., New York U., 1968)
P. Schleuning: Die freie Fantasie: ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Klaviermusik des 18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1970)
M.J. Smiley: The Renaissance Organ Magnificat (diss., U. of Illinois, 1970)
M.C. Bradshaw: The Origin of the Toccata, MSD, xxviii (1972)
S.E. Hanks: The German Unaccompanied Keyboard Concerto in the Early Eighteenth Century, Including Works of Walther, Bach, and their Contemporaries (diss., U. of Iowa, 1972)
R.B. Lynn: Renaissance Organ Music for the Proper of the Mass in Continental Sources (diss., Indiana U., 1974)
H. McConnell: The Lutheran Chorale in the Sixteenth-Century German Keyboard Tablatures (diss., U. of Colorado, 1974)
N. Bergenfeld: The Keyboard Fantasy of the Elizabethan Renaissance (diss., New York U., 1978)
C. Pfeiffer: ‘Das französische prélude non mesuré für Cembalo: Notenbild, Interpretation, Einfluss auf Froberger, Bach, Händel’, NZM, Jg.140 (1979), 132–6
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J. Beder: The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book Dances: the Fusion of Rhythm and Tonal Structure in the Late Renaissance (diss., CUNY, 1982)
G.A. Webber: A History of the Praeludium in North German Organ Music of the 17th Century from its Origins to Buxtehude (diss., U. of Oxford, 1982)
C. van Eyndhoven: ‘Geschiedenis van de orgelmis in Duitsland vanaf haar ontstaan tot het midden van de 18de eeuw’, Adem, xix (1983), 173–7
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D.C. Sanders: The Keyboard Sonatas of Giustini, Paradisi and Rutini: Formal and Stylistic Innovations in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Italian Keyboard Music (diss., U. of Kansas, 1983)
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P.A. Boncella: The Classical Venetian Organ Toccata (1591–1604): an Ecclesiastical Genre Shaped by Printing Technologies and Editorial Policies (diss., Rutgers U., 1991)
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1. The Classical period, 1750–1830.
2. The Romantic period, 1830–1920.
3. Extremism and eclecticism in the 20th century.
Keyboard music, §II: Organ music from c1750
Keyboard music, §II: Organ music from c1750
Keyboard music, §II: Organ music from c1750
Keyboard music, §II: Organ music from c1750
FrotscherG
La MusicaE (‘Organo’; L.F. Tagliavini)
MGG1 (‘Orgelmusik’; F.W. Riedel, W. Apel and T.-M. Langner)
MGG2 (‘Orgelmusik’; F.W. Riedel, W. Apel/M. Zywietz, H. Schauerter Maubouet)
Musica Sacra: Vollständiges Verzeichnis aller seit dem Jahre 1750–1867 gedruckt erschienener Compositionen für die Orgel, Lehrbücher für die Orgel … usw (Erfurt, 1867)
D. Buck: The Influence of the Organ in History (London, 1882, 2/1911)
T. Forchhammer and B. Kothe: Führer durch die Orgel-Literatur (Leipzig, 1890, 3/1931)
H.C. Lahee: The Organ and its Masters (Boston, 1903/R, 2/1927)
L. Hartmann: Die Orgel: gemeinverständliche Darstellung des Orgelbaus und Orgelspiels (Leipzig, 2/1904, 3/1921)
C.F.A. Williams: The Story of Organ Music (London, 1905/R, 2/1916)
C.W. Pearce: The Organist’s Directory … with a Full List of Voluntaries (London, 1908)
H.H. Statham: The Organ and its Position in Musical Art (London, 1909)
H. Grace: The Complete Organist (London, 1920/R)
F. Sauer: Handbuch der Orgel-Literatur: ein Wegweiser für Organisten (Vienna, 1924)
D.E. Berg: The Organ: Composers and Literature (New York, 1927)
H. Westerby: The Complete Organ Recitalist: British and American (London and New York, 1927)
C.M. Widor: L’orgue moderne (Paris, 1928)
K.G. Fellerer: Orgel und Orgelmusik: ihre Geschichte (Augsburg, 1929)
C.F. Waters: The Growth of Organ Music (London, 1931, enlarged 2/1957)
B. Weigl: Handbuch der Orgelliteratur (Leipzig, 1931)
H. Westerby: The Complete Organ Recitalist: International Repertoire Guide to Foreign, British, and American Works (London, 1933)
A.C. Delacour De Brisay: The Organ and its Music (London, 1934)
H. Klotz: Das Buch von der Orgel (Kassel, 1938, 9/1979; Eng. trans., 1969)
G.D. Cunningham: ‘The History and Development of Organ Music’, MT, lxxix (1938), 685–7, 769–70, 848–9, 924–5; lxxx (1939), 50, 205–6, 282–3, 366–7 [series of articles]
F. Münger: Choralbearbeitungen für Orgel (Kassel, 1952)
G.A.C. de Graaf: Literatur over het orgel (Amsterdam, 1957)
V. Lukas: Orgelmusikführer (Stuttgart, 1963; Eng. trans., 1989, as A Guide to Organ Music)
C. Probst: Literatur für Kleinorgel (Zürich, 1964)
F. Jakob: Die Orgel: Orgelbau und Orgelspiel von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Berne, 1969, 3/1974)
E. Kraus: Orgeln und Orgelmusik: das Bild der Orgellandschaften (Regensburg, 1972)
G.S.Rowley: A Biographical Syllabus of the History of Organ Literature: the Nineteenth Century (Iowa City, IA, 1972)
C.R. Arnold: Organ Literature: a Comprehensive Survey (Metuchen, NJ, 1973, 3/1995)
C.R. Arnold: ‘A Bird’s-Eye View of Organ Composition since 1960’, Music: the AGO and RCCO Magazine, ix (1975), 23–7
H. Lohmann: Handbuch der Orgelliteratur (Wiesbaden, 1975)
T.R. Nardone: Organ Music in Print (Philadelphia, 1975)
M. Kratzenstein: Survey of Organ Literature and Editions (Ames, IA, 1980)
E. Sollenberger: Organ Compositions of the 20th Century (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980)
A. Heinrich: Organ and Harpischord Music by Women Composers: an Annotated Catalog (New York, 1991)
R. Judd, ed.: Aspects of Keyboard Music: Essays in Honour of Susi Jeans (Oxford, 1992)
A. Silbiger, ed.: Keyboard Music before 1700 (New York, 1995)
Acta organologica (Berlin, 1967–)
Canadian Music Journal (Sackville, NB, later Toronto, 1956–62)
Choir and Organ (London, 1993–)
The Diapason (Chicago, 1909–)
JBIOS (Oxford, c1977–)
Music: the AGO Magazine (New York, 1967–) [from 1968 (no.10) Music: the AGO and RCCO Magazine, from 1979 The American Organist]
The Organ (1921–)
Organists Review (Southport, 1967–)
Organ Yearbook (Amsterdam, 1970–)
Het orgel (Rotterdam, 1886–)
Sydney Organ Journal (Sydney, 1970–)
H. von Bülow: ‘Alexander Winterberger und das moderne Orgelspiel’, NZM, xlv (1856), 1–3; Eng. trans. in Dwight’s Journal of Music, x (1856), 65–6
R.J. Voigtmann: ‘Der Einfluss der neudeutschen Schule auf das Orgelspiel’, NZM, lxv (1869), 30–31
H.H. Statham: ‘Wanted: a Composer for the Organ’, MT, xx (1879), 633–5
A.G. Ritter: Zur Geschichte des Orgelspiels, vornehmlich des deutschen, im 14. bis zum Anfange des 18. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1884/R)
O. Dienel: Die moderne Orgel: ihre Einrichtung, ihre Bedeutung für die Kirche und ihre Stellung zu J.S. Bachs Orgelmusik (Berlin, 1891)
F.-W. Donat: Christian Heinrich Rinck und die Orgelmusik seiner Zeit (Bad Oeynhausen, 1931)
N. Dufourcq: ‘La pénétration en France de l’oeuvre d’orgue de J.S. Bach’, ReM, no.131 (1932), 27–39
K.G. Fellerer: Studien zur Orgelmusik des ausgehenden 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1932/R)
H. Kelletat: Zur Geschichte der deutschen Orgelmusik in der Frühklassik (Kassel, 1933)
H.-J. Wagner: Die Orgelmusik in Thüringen in der Zeit zwischen 1830 und 1860 (Berlin, 1937)
N. Dufourcq: ‘Panorama de la musique d’orgue française au XXe siècle’, ReM, nos.180–84 (1938), 369–76; nos.185–7 (1938), 35–44, 120–25; nos.188–91 (1939), 103–16
N. Dufourcq: La musique d’orgue française de Jehan Titelouze à Jehan Alain: les instruments, les artistes et les oeuvres, les formes et les styles (Paris, 1941, 2/1949)
M. Schneider: Die Orgelspieltechnik des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, dargestellt an den Orgelschulen der Zeit (Regensburg, 1941/R)
H. Distler: ‘Die Orgel unserer Zeit’, Musica, i (1947), 147–53
C.E. Vogan: The French Organ School of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (diss., U. of Michigan, 1948)
F. Peters: ‘The Belgian Organ School’, HMYB, vi (1949–50), 270–80
W. Sumner: ‘The French Organ School’, HMYB, vi (1949–50), 281–300
A. Kalkoff: Das Orgelschaffen Max Regers im Lichte der deutschen Orgelerneuerungsbewegung (Kassel, 1950)
H. Bornefeld: Orgelbau und neue Orgelmusik (Kassel, 1952)
R. Walter: ‘Die zeitgenossische deutsche Orgelmusik’, Melos, xx (1953), 37–40
H.J. Moser: ‘Orgel und Orgelspiel’, Die evangelische Kirchenmusik in Deutschland (Berlin, 1954), 418–54
W. Kolneder: ‘Johann Nepomuk David und das Orgelschaffen in Österreich’, ÖMz, xiii (1958), 262–5
W. Stockmeier: Die deutsche Orgelsonate der Gegenwart (diss., U. of Cologne, 1958)
‘Organ Music of our Century’, MT, cii (1961), 44–5, 175–8, 311–12, 723–5; ciii (1962), 184–5; civ (1963), 54–5, 208–9; cv (1964), 134–5, 924–6; cvi (1965), 374–5 [various authors]
P. Williams: English Organ Music and the English Organ under the First Four Georges (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1963)
R.J. Kremer: The Organ Sonata since 1845 (diss., Washington U., St Louis, MO, 1963)
B. Owen: ‘American Organ Music and Playing, from 1700’, Organ Institute Quarterly, (1963), 12–15
P. Williams: ‘J.S. Bach and English Organ Music, 1800–35’, ML, xliv (1963), 140–51
R. Quoika: Die Orgelwelt um Anton Bruckner: Blicke in die Orgelgeschichte Alt-Österreichs (Ludwigsburg, 1966)
P. Williams: The European Organ 1450–1850 (London, 1966/R)
A. Haupt: ‘Orgelkunst in Italien’, Der Kirchenmusiker, xviii (1967), 241–5
D.C. Johns, P. Gehring and P.M. Young: ‘A Survey of Contemporary Organ Music’, Church Music [St Louis] (1967), no.2, pp.25–35
R.M. Rudd: Stylistic Trends in Contemporary Organ Music: a Formal and Stylistic Analysis of post World War II Works, 1945–1965 (diss., Louisiana State U., 1967)
Orgel und Orgelmusik heute: St Märgen 1968
F. Högner: ‘Max Reger und die deutsche Orgelbewegung’, Ars organi, xvi (1968), 1153–8
E. Routley: The Musical Wesleys (London, 1968/R)
S. Waumsley: The Organ Music of Oliver Messiaen (Paris, 1968/R)
F. Douglass: The Language of the Classical French Organ (New Haven, CT, 1969)
M. Weyer: Die deutsche Orgelsonate von Mendelssohn bis Reger (Regensburg, 1969)
A.J.G. Jones: A Survey of Organ Works Based on the Motive B–A–C–H (diss., U. of Texas, 1970)
O. Biba: ‘The Unknown Organ Music of Austria’, The Diapason, lxii/2 (1970–71), 10
F. Peeters and M.A. Vente: Die orgelkunst in de Nederlanden van de 16de tot de 18de eeuw (Antwerp, 1971)
H. Busch: ‘Max Reger und die Orgel seiner Zeit’, Musik und Kirche, xliii (1973), 63–73
J. Caldwell: English Keyboard Music before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973)
F. Routh: Early English Organ Music from the Middle Ages to 1837 (London, 1973)
P. Schwarz: Studien zur Orgelmusik Franz Liszts: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Orgelkomposition im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1973)
B.D. Wye: ‘Gregorian Influences in French Organ Music before the Motu Proprio’, JAMS, xxvii (1974), 1–24
R.A. Kotek: The French Organ Mass in the 20th Century (diss., U. of Illinois, 1974)
C. Johnson: 20th-Century Solo Organ Music which is Indeterminate with Respect to Performance (diss., Northwestern U., 1975)
H. Mayer: ‘Avant-Garde Organ Music in the Netherlands’, Key Notes, ii (1975), 37
M. Sutter: ‘Liszt and his Role in the Development of 19th Century Organ Music’, Music: the AGO and RCCO Magazine, ix (1975), 35–9
G. Cantagrel and H. Halbreich: Le Livre d’or de l’orgue français (Paris, 1976)
M.-L. Jacquet: ‘La musique d’orgue après Jehan Alain’, ReM, no.316 (1978), 135
B. Owen: ‘Fugues, Fantasia, and Variations’, Journal of Church Music, (1979), 2–4, 46–8
G. de la Salle: ‘L’Orgue Symphonique’, ReM, no.326 (1979), 173
P. Williams: The Organ Music of Bach (Cambridge, 1980–84)
D. Fuller: ‘Zenith and Nadir: the Organ versus its Music in Late 18th Century France’, L’orgue à notre époque: Montreal 1981, 129–50
B. Hambraeus: ‘Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, Charles-Marie Widor: the Organ and the Orchestra’, ibid., 161–8
E.W. Hancock: ‘Organ Music by Black Composers’, American Organist, xv/1 (1981), 36–7
B. Owen: ‘Brahms’s “Eleven”: Classical Organ Works in a Romantic Age’, Journal of Church Music, xxv/9 (1983), 5–9
W. Noble: ‘Canadian Organ Composition since 1945’, American Organist, xviii/2 (1984), 50–53
J. Ropek: ‘A Survey of Modern Organ Music in Czechoslovakia’, Organists’ Review, lxxii (1987), 97–101
P. Williams: Playing the Organ Works of Bach: some Case Studies (New York, 1987)
A. Armstrong: ‘Alexandre Guilmant: American Tours and American Organs’, The Tracker, xxxii (1989), 15–23
J. Dibble: ‘Stanford and the Organ Recitals at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1872–1890’, JBIOS, xviii (1994), 158–70
O. Ochse: Organists and Organ Playing in 19th-Century France and Belgium (Bloomington, IN, 1994)
C.S. Ripley: ‘Organ Music by French Women Composers’, American Organist, xxviii/11 (1994), 56–61
L. Archbold and W.J. Peterson: French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor (Rochester, NY, 1995)
E. Kooiman: ‘Jacques Lemmens, Charles-Marie Widor, and the French Bach Tradition’, American Organist, xxix/3 (1995), 56–64
B.L. Leach: ‘Organ Music by Israeli Composers: a Tradition of Diversity’, The Diapason, lxxxvi/7 (1995), 12–13
M. Szoka: ‘Current Streams in Polish Organ Music’, The Diapason, lxxxvi/5 (1995), 11–13
A. Heiller: ‘Orgelbouw en improvisatie’, Het orgel, cxiii (1996), 11–14
M.T. Terry: ‘African-American Organ Literature: a Selective Overview’, The Diapason, lxxxvii/4 (1996), 14–17
C.S. Ripley: ‘Concert Organ Music by Women Composers in the United States’, American Organist, xxxi/2 (1997), 56–64
M. Murray: French Masters of the Organ (New Haven, CT, 1998)
BlumeEK
W. Riley: Parochial Music Corrected: Containing Remarks on … the Use of Organs and the Performance of Organists (London, 1762)
F.W.T. Linke: Der rechte Gebrauch der Orgeln beym öffentlichen Gottesdienste (Altenburg, 1766)
D.G. Türk: Von den wichtigsten Pflichten eines Organisten (Halle, 1787/R, 2/1838)
F. Kessler: Der musikalische Kirchendienst (Iserlohn, 1832)
J.H. Göroldt: Die Orgel und deren zweckmässiger Gebrauch bei dem öffentlichen Gottesdienst (Quedlinburg, 1835)
R.S. Candlish: The Organ Question: For and Against the Use of the Organ in Public Worship (Edinburgh, 1856)
R.J. Voigtmann: Das neuere kirchliche Orgelspiel (Leipzig, 1870)
J.F. Bridge: Organ Accompaniment of the Choral Service (London, 1885)
F. Zimmer: Die Kirchenorgel und das kirchliche Orgelspiel (Gotha, 1891)
G. Rietschel: Die Aufgabe der Orgel im Gottesdienst bis in das 18. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1893/R)
W. Baumann: Das Orgelspiel im evangelischen Gottesdienst (Karlsruhe, 1915)
K.G. Fellerer: Beiträge zur Choralbegleitung und Choralverarbeitung in der Orgelmusik des ausgehenden 18. und beginnenden 19. Jahrhunderts (Strasbourg, 1932, 2/1980)
R. Lachmann: ‘Das moderne Choralvorspiel als gottesdienstliche Gebrauchsmusik’, Zeitschrift für Kirchenmusiker, xx (1938), 60
J.G. Mehl: Die Aufgabe der Orgel im Gottesdienst der lutherischen Kirche (Munich, 1938)
R. Haupt: Die Orgel im evangelischen Kultraum in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Northeim, 1954)
M. Blindow: Die Choralbegleitung des 18. Jahrhunderts in der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands (Regensburg, 1957)
N. Danby: ‘Organ Design for English Liturgy’, JBIOS, i (1977), 57–9
A. Luff: ‘The Liturgical Use of The Organ in English Worship’, Ars et Musica in Liturgia: CelebratoryVolume Presented to Caspar Handers, ed. F. Brouwer and R.A. Leaver (Utrecht, 1993), 117–27
3. Romanticism and the miniature.
5. 19th-century national trends.
6. The growth of pianism, 1900–1940.
Keyboard music, §III: Piano music from c1750
Keyboard music, §III: Piano music from c1750
Although Mozart soon tired of aping an archaic Baroque style, the effects on his own music of his experiences with Bach and Handel were profound and long-lasting. The unique single-voiced opening of k533 invokes the atmosphere of fugue, realized more fully in the second group, as well as in the minor-mode episode of the Rondo (published in 1788 with the two movements of k533 though composed in 1786). The opening movement of the Sonata in D k576, perhaps Mozart’s masterpiece in this genre, bristles with lean, athletic counterpoint; it maintains the composer’s predilection for the open-ended half-cadence that moves to the dominant in the exposition, while remaining in the tonic for the recapitulation (nearly half of the 35 major-mode sonata movements in the keyboard sonatas use this ‘bifocal close’). Baron van Swieten’s advocacy of C.P.E. Bach immediately stimulated two fantasias k396/385f and 397/385g, both remaining fragments, although the second, in D minor, is still a favourite. The Fantasia in C minor k475, a work of great emotional scope, was published at the head of the sonata in the same key, completed five months earlier. Its impact on Beethoven’s obsessive bouts with C minor can scarcely be exaggerated. A late Fantasia in F minor k608, composed in March 1791 for a mechanical organ but published as early as 1799 for piano four-hands, deserves more frequent hearings. Yet by far the most important development during this period was Mozart’s deepening relationship with Haydn, whom he probably first met in 1781. Although Haydn’s musical influence is most readily traceable in Mozart’s mature chamber music, it is still felt in movements such as the monothematic opening Allegro of k570, or in the bold choice of the lowered submediant as the secondary key of the Adagio of k576. The remarkable two-year period framed by the composition of Le nozze di Figaro and of Don Giovanni saw Mozart add four jewels to the crown of his works for keyboard, including the four-hand sonata k497, an unqualified masterpiece; an inspired set of four-hand variations k501; the chromatically rich A minor Rondo k511 and an outstandingly expressive Adagio in B minor k540. All this music was written for a five-octave instrument about which Mozart is not known to have voiced reservations. When the recapitulation of a sonata movement threatened to exceed its compass, his imagination was fused by the limitation, resulting in some of his most adroit touches, as in the opening movements of k333/315c (ex.5) or the concerto k449. The concert instrument used by Mozart and built by Anton Walter about 1780 included only two tone-modifying devices: a pair of knee-levers that raised either all the dampers or only the treble ones (the presence of hand-stops as well for the dampers on the original suggests Mozart may have requested the addition of knee-levers, perhaps taking his cue from Stein’s instruments); and a handstop over the middle of the keyboard that placed a thin strip of cloth between the hammer and the strings, acting as a mute. In passages such as the middle section of the Andante of k330/300h, this sourdine imparts an ethereal effect fundamentally different from that achieved with the shift on a modern instrument. Both the mute and the raising of the dampers were regarded in Mozart’s time as special effects; his celebrated remark that phrases should ‘flow like oil’ has often been construed as an unqualified endorsement of legato, inviting indiscriminate application of the modern damper pedal. In practice, both the rapid tonal decay on the fortepiano and the articulative richness of Mozart’s scores preclude any uniform solutions. It is no condemnation of present-day instruments that the carefully marked phrasing at the opening of k332/300k (ex.6) is almost impossible to achieve naturally except on a fortepiano.
Haydn’s long life allowed him to continue to absorb and recast the
most important advances of Viennese Classicism. The sonatas of Haydn’s maturity
are all the more remarkable for the stylistic distance that their composer had
traversed to create them. The obligatory da capo minuet of previous decades
disappears almost entirely; when required to supply one about 1789, the
composer responded in the Sonata in E (hXVI:49) with a large-scale
‘Tempo di minuet’ containing an elaborately rewritten repeat. A standard
three-movement, fast–slow–fast scheme avoids tedium by incorporating at least
one movement not in regular sonata form: the alternating major–minor variations
(a favourite technique) that open hXVI:39 and close
no.34; the spacious binary form with rondo elements that concludes hXVI:50; or the unexpected sonata-rondo that opens hXVI:51. But Haydn proved equally drawn in this period to a
two-movement grouping, providing Beethoven with a point of departure for his
subsequent experiments. Two of the three two-movement sonatas that appeared
together in 1784 (in G and D) go so far as to abandon any references to sonata
style. In the finale of no.40 Haydn took special delight in punctuating
cadences with abrupt leaps of three octaves (ex.7); the fortepiano, with its clearly
delineated registers, conveys the humour of these gestures with particular
effectiveness. The pervasive imitation throughout the finale of the Sonata in D
may reflect Haydn’s encounters with J.S. Bach at Baron van Swieten’s. Equally
important is the surge of cantabile writing found in the slow movement of the
Sonata in E written in
about 1789 for Marianne von Genzinger, to whom Haydn extolled the virtues of a
fortepiano by Wenzel Schantz. In the freewheeling Fantasia in C (hXVII:4), published at about the same time, Haydn instructs the
performer at two points to hold the cadential octave until the tone dies away;
on a well-regulated modern grand the sound lingers for almost a minute. Between
his first and second London sojourns, the composer penned an elaborate keyboard
farewell to the double variation (hXVII:7), built on a
pair of utterly non-symmetrical themes that erupt during only the third
variation into a rhapsodic coda. Three highly individual sonatas (nos.50–52)
composed during the next year in London provide a fitting climax to Haydn’s
output in this medium. The ‘open pedal’ demanded in the first movement of no.50
marks the migration of the Viennese knee-levers to a location on the forward
supporting legs of English models where they could be depressed with the foot.
The finale of the same work exploits the five-and-a-half-octave range of the
newest English models; their fuller, weightier sound may be partly responsible
for the symphonic grandeur that permeates the opening movement of no.52.
Throughout his career Haydn’s approach to sonata form was punctuated by
surprise and experiment, continually nourished by his longstanding fascination
with monothematicism. Even more than in the music of Mozart, Haydn’s frequent
changes of texture and spiky rhythms depend upon the quick response and rapid
tonal decay of the early piano.
The most remarkable aspect of Beethoven’s monumental 32 keyboard sonatas (including three teaching pieces in the spirit of Mozart’s k545) is that they continue to expand and refine a genre that seemed to have reached perfection in the music of Haydn and Mozart. Three early sonatas (WoO 47) published before the composer was 13 present rather stiff imitations of C.P.E. Bach’s Sturm und Drang style. By the time he brought out his three op.2 sonatas in Vienna in 1796, Beethoven had obviously made a thorough study of Mozart and Haydn, in spite of his exaggerated claim to have learnt nothing from his most celebrated teacher. The older man’s influence is easily traceable in the conciseness and wit of the Sonata in F op.10 no.2 or in the humorous scherzos of op.2 nos.2 and 3 borrowed from Haydn’s quartets. But the most persistent strand up to op.22 is the loose, additive post-Classical language already discernible in Mozart’s late piano concertos. Virtually every gambit in the opening movement of Mozart’s k467 – the piano opening and subsequent tutti explosion, the bifocal close preceding a dramatic interjection of the minor dominant, the wealth of closing ideas that confirm the major – appear in the first movement of op.2 no.3, in the same key. The con gran espressione of op.7 and the Largo e mesto of op.10 no.3 invest Beethoven’s slow movements with new dignity and pathos. Blatant sectionalism pervades the Rondo finales of opp.7 and 22; here, as elsewhere, what separates Beethoven from the transitional generation of Clementi, Dussek, Hummel and Weber is his unflagging reliance on the sonata principle. By the 1790s the pressures on composers to abandon the symmetrical resolution of sonata form were considerable. Muzio Clementi, essentially a contemporary of Mozart who lived well into the new century, played an important role in these developments. His nearly six dozen keyboard sonatas published between 1779 and 1821 take Mozart as their point of departure (opp.7, 9 and 10 were published in Vienna), with greater emphasis on virtuoso techniques (such as the rapid parallel 3rds and octaves of op.2 no.4) and italianate melody, especially in slow movements. After their contest before Joseph II on Christmas Eve 1781, Mozart characterized Clementi as a ‘mere mechanicus’. The substantial increase over the next decade in the scale of his works is not matched by a corresponding increase in the capacity of thematic material to support the larger structures. Clementi’s recapitulations frequently exhibit only a casual relationship to his expositions, with minimal attention paid to resolving long-range harmonic tension. The virtues of his last and best-known sonata, op.50 no.3, subtitled ‘Didone abbandonata’, remain those of lean, athletic textures and dramatic changes of mood familiar from his earliest works. Curiously, although he was closely tied to piano manufacture from the 1790s, little of the increased capacity of the new six-octave instruments is reflected in Clementi’s keyboard music, probably because most of it was composed by 1805.
Between 1817 and 1826 Clementi brought out a series of volumes
under the title Gradus ad Parnassum, devoted to the attainment of a
fluent technique. Debussy paid an affectionate tribute to the popularity of
these exercises in his ‘Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum’ from Children’s Corner.
Clementi was joined in these endeavours by two other distinguished men, Carl
Czerny and J.B. Cramer. Czerny had studied as a youngster with Beethoven before
becoming a private instructor from the age of 15, numbering among his pupils
Theodor Kullak, Thalberg, Stephen Heller and the young Liszt. Although Liszt
frequently played Czerny’s Sonata no.1 in A op.7, it was as an indefatigable pedagogue that
Czerny chose to make his mark. In more than 800 works devoted largely to
technical studies (the best known being the Vollständige
theoretisch-praktische Pianoforte-Schule op.500), Czerny compiled and
codified the technical advances of the piano during a period of extremely rapid
development. If Czerny’s methods were already beginning to show signs of age
before his death, he continued to command the respect and admiration of his
peers. Cramer, although an essentially conservative force like Czerny, was
(according to Ries) considered by Beethoven to be the finest pianist of his
day. He is remembered chiefly today for two fine sets of 42 studies each,
published in 1804 and 1810 and endorsed by Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin.
Foreshadowings of at least a dozen composers from Beethoven and
Schubert to Liszt and Brahms have been detected by proponents of the music of
J.L. Dussek. In terms of pianistic figuration, there is no doubt that Dussek
was a pioneer; formally he was much less so, relying heavily on the rondo and
other sectional schemes. No hard evidence remains to show that Beethoven was
familiar with his music, as can be demonstrated in the case of Clementi. Nearly
30 sonatas (several bearing programmatic titles) composed between 1788 and 1812
bear witness to a highly eclectic style stimulated by Dussek’s peripatetic
career as a travelling virtuoso. His association with the firm of Broadwood
contributed to an expansion of the piano’s range to six octaves (C'–c'''')
as early as 1794. J.N. Hummel’s ties to Viennese Classicism were considerably
stronger, for he had studied with Mozart as a child and returned frequently to
Vienna. Until the 1820s Hummel’s fame nearly rivalled Beethoven’s. Apart from
an early sonata issued in London, his five remaining works in this genre were
published in Vienna between 1805 and 1825, including a near-masterpiece, the
Sonata in F
minor
op.81, which appeared just after Beethoven’s op.106. The exposition of its
opening movement arrives in A major after a generous interlude in C major,
pointing up Hummel’s continued loosening of high Classical structures, as well
as his anticipation of Schumann’s harmonic palette (ex.8). Like Clementi’s and Dussek’s, Weber’s
career was marked by extensive travels; unlike either, his principal field of
activity was opera. When, on examining the score of Der Freischütz in
1823, Beethoven remarked that its composer ‘must write operas, nothing but
operas’, he displayed a keen appreciation of Weber’s special gifts. Throughout
his four sonatas (all but the third in four movements) the pacing is
consistently operatic, aided by directives such as con duolo, mormorando
and consolante in no.4. Running passage-work over simple chordal
accompaniments, as in the first movement of the Sonata in A, look forward to such patterns in
the works of Chopin. For his own part, Weber remarked in 1810 that Beethoven’s
compositions after 1800 were ‘a confused chaos, an unintelligible struggle
after novelty’.
Weber was almost certainly referring to Beethoven’s resolve not to
settle into the structurally less demanding language of the proto-Romantics. In
the highly experimental sonatas of opp.26–8 it looked as if Beethoven might
indeed pursue this path. The A Sonata dispenses altogether with straight sonata
form. Both of the op.27 sonatas exhibit novel structures, and op.28 is
noteworthy for its off-tonic beginning and third-related modulatory scheme. The
conflicts in Beethoven’s style around 1800 are drawn cleanly in op.27 no.2 (the
‘Moonlight’), whose famous opening demands the intimacy of the drawing-room,
while its stormy and very public finale pushes the five-octave instrument inherited
from Mozart right to (though not beyond) its limits. Op.31 no.3 was the last
four-movement sonata until the inaptly labelled ‘Hammerklavier’ (the generic
term for the Viennese piano after 1815) of 15 years later. In the autumn of
1802 Beethoven wrote to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel concerning the
‘new manner’ of his two sets of variations, opp.34 and 35. Continuing with the
Waldstein, and even more emphatically with the ‘Appassionata’, Beethoven
recreated the taut, integrated aesthetic of the high Classical period, though
on a greatly intensified scale. It scarcely seems an accident that this
dramatic turnabout in Beethoven’s style paralleled equally dramatic
developments in the Viennese piano. Within six years the instrument nearly
doubled its weight and more than trebled its string tension. The menacing
opening of op.57, plumbing the lowest note on the keyboard, is unthinkable
without the powerful yet clear bass of the new six-octave models. The lush
sweetness of these instruments is reflected in the two movements of op.78,
Beethoven’s only work in F and a particular favourite of the composer’s. ‘Les
Adieux’, op.81a, composed in the same year and key as the ‘Emperor’
Concerto, provided a fitting close for the solo sonata to the ‘heroic decade’.
Both opp.90 and 101 show a closer affinity with the later styles of Schubert
and Mendelssohn respectively, revealing a composer once again at the
crossroads. Much like op.57 of a dozen years earlier, the monumental Sonata in
B op.106 marked
Beethoven’s final return to an expanded vision of the high Classical style,
spurred by another burst in the size and weight of Viennese pianos. The
frequent choice of non-dominant secondary areas in sonata movements after 1817
is overshadowed by continually deepening levels of thematic integration, such
as the relentless chains of descending 3rds that saturate the first movement of
op.106 (ex.9). The Adagio of this
remarkable work, placed after the Scherzo and in the remote key of F minor, is both the longest
and the most deeply felt among Beethoven’s slow movements. But it was the
composer’s renewed interest in fugue, first seen in the finales of op.101 and
the cello sonata op.102 no.2, that dominated the late style. The equally fugal
yet diametrically opposed finales of both opp.106 and 110 demonstrate the
extent to which Beethoven could impose his will upon the intractable rules of
counterpoint. Closely allied with this absorption was the practice of
variation, culminating in the Arietta of op.111, whose transcendent blend of
variation and sonata inspired Kretschmar’s impassioned homage in Thomas Mann’s Dr
Faustus. When invited to contribute a variation on the publisher Diabelli’s
‘Schusterfleck’ of a waltz, Beethoven responded over a period extending from
1818 to 1823 with a series of 33 variations that constitute a final compendium
of Classical techniques. He took his leave from the piano with his third cycle
of (as Beethoven referred to them) Bagatelles op.126, which not only served as
an experimental laboratory for the late quartets but also anticipated the
character-pieces of the Romantics.
Although Schubert never billed himself as a pianist, he produced a prodigious quantity of keyboard music over scarcely more than a decade, including 11 solo sonatas, substantial fragments of nine others, three sets of Impromptus and Moments musicaux, and more than 400 dances for occasional use. During his lifetime the 16-bar Trauerwalzer d365 no.2 became so popular that its citation did not require the identification of Schubert as the composer. He began half a dozen sonatas before completing d537, the first of three impassioned works in A minor. Two of these, along with the ‘little’ A major (a perennial favourite) are in only three movements; otherwise Schubert – unlike Beethoven after 1802 – preferred the spaciousness of a four-movement plan. Among the dance movements scherzos are most represented, but a work as late as the Fantasia in G d894 (1826) presents an old-fashioned Menuetto. In certain respects Schubert was formally less experimental than Beethoven. All of his opening movements are in sonata form; after 1819 all but one of his finales are sonata-rondos or even simpler straight rondos. His slow movements are slightly more adventurous, favouring the two- and three-part forms whose simple contrasts proved so appealing to the next generation. But it is the relationship in Schubert’s music between theme and tonality that differentiates him from his great contemporary and that so profoundly influenced Brahms and Mahler. The ‘heavenly length’ praised by Schumann points up the leisurely unfolding of long, arching themes rooted in song. Rather than struggling to create dynamic transitions along Beethovenian lines, Schubert viewed the obligatory modulation in expositions as an opportunity for a series of bold, common-tone key changes that minimize the structural significance of the secondary tonality. In movements such as the finale of the C minor Sonata d958 this process is carried to almost bizarre lengths; in others, such as the deeply moving Molto moderato that opens the last of the late sonatas, d960, the motion through the flattened submediant (both major and minor) is achieved effortlessly through what amounts to thematic transformation. Schubert’s models in these sonatas, which compare in importance with those of late Beethoven, are clearly the mature sonatas of Hummel (to whom he planned to dedicate his final three). Although lacking the technical challenges routinely confronted in Beethoven’s music, their figuration is rarely perfunctory; a compelling performance demands an outstanding sensitivity to proportion and pacing. The two exceptions to these moderate technical demands are the Sonata in D d850, composed during the same summer, that of 1825, which saw the composition of the ‘Great’ C major Symphony, and, emphatically, the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy, a work of unabashed virtuosity whose continuous structure inspired the cyclic forms of Liszt. The song that provides the starting-point for its slow section, and from which the work derives its name, provides perhaps the most splendid example in Schubert of the poignant contrast between major and minor.
Schubert’s interest in smaller forms ran considerably deeper than Beethoven’s, and resulted in some of his finest efforts. The two sets of four impromptus and the six Moments musicaux (a title invented by the publisher Leidesdorf) were created largely in the last two years of the composer’s life, at least partly in response to exhortations from publishers for less demanding music. It is a tribute to Schubert’s greatness that he was able to produce masterpiece after masterpiece among works directed solely at the domestic market. Only the first of the op.142 impromptus uses sonata form, inspiring some writers to interpret its other three members as the remainder of a four-movement sonata. At least half of the 14 pieces in these works are straightforward ternary forms with verbatim repeats of their opening sections. Others, such as op.94 no.2, introduce the double variation (ABA'B'A'' inherited from Haydn and later exploited by Mahler. The care lavished by Schubert on the countless sets of ländler, German dances, waltzes and ecossaises (the first three of these stylistically indistinguishable) far exceeded the demands of the form; many invite enrichment by the discreet addition of the pedal-activated buff or Janissary stops in vogue during the first quarter of the 19th century. Their application was mandatory in the fashionable battle pieces first popularized by Koczwara’s The Battle of Prague (c1788). Although Schubert rarely exploited the available range of the Viennese pianos (none of the last three sonatas uses the extra 4th added in the bass around 1816), his relationship to these instruments is considerably more sensual than that of Beethoven. The idiosyncratic wide spacing of chords, so frequently featuring the 3rd in the soprano, and the placement of tunes in the clear, singing tenor register reflect the special virtues of the pianos on which Schubert composed and performed.
Schubert’s achievements in smaller forms were not without precedent in works by two Bohemian composers, Jan Tomášek and Jan Voříšek. With a series of evocatively titled eclogues, rhapsodies or dithyrambs published between 1807 and 1818, Tomášek laid good claim to being the originator of the short character-piece that proved so appealing to Romantic composers. His pupil Voříšek took up residence in Vienna, where he enjoyed fruitful relationships with Beethoven, Hummel and Schubert. Although documentation is lacking, it seems likely that Voříšek’s impromptus influenced Schubert’s compositions of the same name.
Keyboard music, §III: Piano music from c1750
After the deaths of Beethoven (1827) and Schubert (1828) the decline of the sonata was swift and precipitous. Although its prestige remained enormous, largely because of the achievement of Beethoven, stylistic developments turned rapidly in other directions. The sonatas of Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, however imaginative in certain respects, project a sense of imitation rather than continued evolution. Schumann was one of the first composers to give his character-pieces poetic titles rather than using generic titles such as ‘impromptu’ or ‘bagatelle’. In Germany the chief architect of this aesthetic shift was Robert Schumann, who used his editorship of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik as a forum for proclaiming both Chopin and the young Brahms. Composed during the 1830s, Schumann’s first 23 opus numbers were all for solo keyboard, including several of his best-known works. From his op.1 (the Abegg Variations) on, the voice is clear and assured, characterized by an extraordinarily poetic harmonic imagination, strong root movements, frequent doublings and a preference for the middle range of the piano. Although Robert and Clara did not receive the grand manufactured by Conrad Graf until their marriage in 1840 (the instrument was later bequeathed to Brahms), the music composed by both demonstrates the warmth and intimacy of the Viennese instruments. Many of his most successful works, including Papillons op.2, the Davidsbündlertänze op.6, Carnaval op.9 and Kreisleriana op.16, consist of cycles of miniatures whose interdependency is analogous to that found in the later song cycles like Dichterliebe. In Carnaval a series of epigrammatic mottos provides a modicum of musical connection, but the deeper unity is more elusive, based on harmonically open beginnings or closes and a keen sensitivity to contrasts in mood. Along with figures from the commedia dell’arte, Schumann presents sympathetic portraits of Clara Wieck, Chopin and Paganini, as well as of Eusebius and Florestan, the introvert and extrovert sides of his own musical personality. It is surprising to find the density of short internal repeats – betraying binary origins – in movements of wide-ranging harmonic freedom such as those in Kreisleriana (inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s character and dedicated to Chopin). Often accompanying these repetitive forms are the kinds of motoric rhythm familiar from the Baroque (Schumann acknowledged that his music was closer in spirit to Bach than to Mozart). The predilection for building on short, symmetrical harmonic sequences can lead to a marked squareness, often rescued by highly original figuration. Apart from the opening movements of the three sonatas, sonata form surfaces only rarely in Schumann’s works. An effective example is the finale of the Faschingsschwank aus Wien op.26, whose opening rondo remains one of the composer’s freshest inspirations.
In such works as the Studien nach Capricen von Paganini op.3, the Toccata op.7, the Etudes symphoniques op.13 and the Phantasie op.17, Schumann made important contributions to an expansion of the piano’s range and sonority, keeping pace with the new iron-framed instruments being built in the 1830s. The Phantasie, dedicated to Liszt and whose proceeds Schumann contributed to the fund for the Beethoven monument in Bonn, is considered by many to be his masterpiece. With its pointed references to the last of Beethoven’s songs from An die ferne Geliebte, it offers an eloquent farewell to Classicism. In spite of a reliance on structures of the da capo type and strong subdominant leanings, it is one of Schumann’s most successful large-scale works, concluding with a serene slow movement in C that evokes the spirit of the Arietta finale of Beethoven’s op.111. Schumann’s considerable reliance on the metronome has been attacked on numerous occasions, but used with care (and sometimes modified by Clara’s own editorial suggestions) his markings provide a very useful guide. He was also one of the first composers to designate long passages as simply ‘mit Pedal’, confirming the shift of the dampers’ function from that of a special effect to a continuous ingredient in the texture. Finally, Schumann’s commitment to high-quality pieces in his studies for children resulted in such welcome additions to this repertory as the Kinderszenen op.15 and most especially the Album für die Jugend op.68.
Although Schumann’s innovations appeared less radical by the end of the century, they remained more far-reaching than those of his contemporary Mendelssohn. After leading a revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829, Mendelssohn issued a series of keyboard works that included preludes and fugues (a set of six appeared in 1837), capriccios and fantasias, evoking a Baroque atmosphere overlaid with post-Classical phrase structure. A favourite arrangement was the slow introductory opening succeeded by a fleet Allegro or even Presto, most familiar from the Rondo capriccioso op.14, composed when Mendelssohn was only 15. A quarter of his output consists of eight books of Lieder ohne Worte, shorter lyric pieces predominantly in simple ternary form, whose moderate technical demands offered sustenance to the amateur player in danger of being swamped in a sea of virtuosity.
The designation ‘revolutionary’ is properly reserved in the 19th
century for a figure such as Chopin. In spite of precedents to be found in the
music of Hummel and Field, even Chopin’s earliest works are stamped with an
originality that could scarcely have been expected. All of his more than 200
works involve the piano (the vast majority are for piano solo), and in this
respect he typifies the increasing specialization of the Romantics. Only a
handful of concertos, sonatas and chamber works employed what were by now
academic forms. Otherwise Chopin preferred generic titles that readily conjured
up poetic images (ballade, barcarolle), though he stopped short of overt
programmaticism, maintaining the tradition of absolute music in the two
composers he most revered, Bach and Mozart. His discomfort with large,
multi-movement forms is betrayed in the two youthful concertos, whose opening
movements reverse the customary sequence of modulations in exposition and recapitulation.
Visits to Vienna in 1829 and 1831 saw the première, on an instrument placed at
Chopin’s disposal by Conrad Graf, of the variations on ‘Là ci darem la mano’
(the work to be greeted by Schumann’s prophetic review: ‘Hats off, gentlemen, a
genius!’). The Waltz in E op.18, the first of the large concert waltzes, was
also set down in Vienna. But Chopin’s decision in the autumn of 1831 to take up
at least temporary residence in Paris sealed the decline of the imperial
capital and marked the ascendancy of the French metropolis to its position as
the centre of new musical fashion for the next 90 years. Most importantly for
the evolution of the piano, developments now shifted to the French-English
design. Both the more conservative English action retained by Pleyel and the
repitition action patented by Erard in the 1820s (the model for virtually all
modern grand actions) provided more leverage with less effort than the
increasingly cumbersome Viennese action, whose mechanical disadvantage
multiplied as the instruments grew in size and weight. Many of Chopin’s effects
depend upon the increased sustaining power, particularly in the treble, of the
newest French instruments. At the same time, both Pleyel and Erard’s
flat-strung pianos retained a clarity and transparency, even in the bass, that
was aided by a more lightweight and efficient damping system. Gone for good
were the exotic multiple pedal stops of the Viennese instruments; Romantic pianists
made do with the damper and shift pedals now standard on English models.
Chopin’s preference for the more intimate sound of the Pleyel (whose action was
slightly shallower than that of the Erard and had virtually no after-touch)
shows that he resisted over-simplified notions of ‘progress’.
On his arrival in Paris, Chopin began the regular and systematic
cultivation of almost ten different genres. Dominant among the smaller forms
were the mazurkas and nocturnes, which collectively reveal an astonishingly varied
approach to ternary form. The modal colouring of the Mazurka in C minor op.41 no.4 (caused by the
use of the lowered 2nd and 7th degrees) sets up the return to the opening A
section via the augmented 6th rather than the dominant, a technique that was to
become a Romantic cliché. While still a youth in Warsaw Chopin had access to an
intriguing new genre of composition by the Irishman John Field: the nocturne.
Field’s first four compositions bearing this atmospheric title appeared in St
Petersburg and Moscow in 1812, and doubtless made their way to Warsaw soon
after. To Field goes the credit for evolving the arpeggiated accompaniment over
which an expressive melody is free to spin out. Traces of the nocturne as it
was inherited from Field are evident in op.9 no.2 (a perennial favourite of
amateurs) but Chopin soon transformed the species to accommodate a much wider
emotional range. The extreme contrasts of op.15 no.1 provide a memorable early
example; 15 years later the highly ornamented return in the Nocturne in B op.62
no.1 raises subtlety to new heights while assimilating Chopin’s love of Italian
bel canto. Although performers frequently present them in different groups,
many of these sets were arranged by Chopin as collections unified in sequence
of mood and tonal plan. The almost 20 waltzes are more openly sectional, as
befits their dance origins, and prompted some of the composer’s most
spontaneous melodies, reinforced in the larger concert waltzes by ingenious
repetition schemes. His most direct homage to Bach, the 24 Preludes,
encompasses an array of formal schemes far richer than their aphoristic
character might suggest. A large number are built on a single phrase that
requires only a single repetition rather than contrasting material to attain
completeness. An even more virtuoso treatment of repetition underlies the
Berceuse op.57, where a simple alternating pattern of tonic and dominant
harmonies repeated 54 consecutive times supports a remarkably free and florid
set of seamless melodic variations. A similar union of circumscribed harmonies
and operatic display (frequently in duet textures) informs the equally
remarkable Barcarolle op.60, which captures perfectly the gentle undulations of
a Venetian gondola without the sentimentality so often attached to the genre.
Apart from his one youthful sonata, Chopin’s experiments in this
form produced two highly individual works, both in the old-fashioned four
movements though with the scherzo placed second. In both opening allegros the
focus on thematic rather than tonal processes leads to a marked
sectionalization between vigorous first and lyrical second groups. The finale
of the B Sonata is one
of the most original movements Chopin ever wrote, subjugating all the
traditional elements to a single bare, fleeting texture. His ten or so
remaining large-scale works (all in one movement) evince two opposed
approaches. The polonaises, the first three scherzos and the second ballade
employ large-scale ternary or rondo structures built around highly contrasted
material. However, the three remaining ballades (in G minor, A and F minor), as well as the
Scherzo in E op.54, the Fantasy op.49 and the Polonaise-Fantasy op.61, each
offer highly individual solutions to the special formal problems posed by
thematic transformation and seamless transitions. The influence of sonata procedures
is obvious in the first and last ballades and in the Fantasy, though with a
minimum of emphasis on resolving material from secondary keys in the tonic. By
establishing A major
as emphatically at the close as it does F minor in its opening, the Fantasy
promotes the interchangeability of relative major and minor; the conclusion in
A minor of the F major Ballade, which made such an impression upon Schumann,
provides an even stronger example of Chopin’s undermining of a single, central
tonality. Although the Fantasy Impromptu, published posthumously, has always
been the most popular of Chopin’s compositions in this vein, his ‘fantasy’
masterpiece is doubtless the Polonaise-Fantasy, in which the most heroic and
extrovert characteristics of the genres cultivated by Chopin are blended with
the most intimate flights of fancy. Performances that ignore the single basic
tempo marking of Allegro maestoso obscure the underlying unity.
Keyboard music, §III: Piano music from c1750
Keyboard virtuosos had travelled across Europe since the mid-18th century, but the bulk of published music was aimed at the amateur market. Beginning with Beethoven, the situation was rapidly transformed; Czerny reported to the composer in a conversation book that a woman in Vienna could still not play the opening of the Hammerklavier Sonata even though she had been practising it for months. The 84 studies of Cramer, published in 1804 and 1810, were considered by Beethoven to be the ‘best preparation for his own works’, receiving praise in the next generation from Schumann. Czerny’s Vollständige theoretisch praktische Pianoforte-Schule op.500, although not published until 1839, codified earlier practices. The era of the Romantic virtuoso was properly launched with the publication of Chopin’s two sets of études in 1833 and 1837 (though the earliest were composed in 1829). He combined the solution to a single technical problem (including rapid parallel 3rds, 6ths or octaves in the same hand; black keys, large jumps) with works of intrinsic artistic merit, worthy of placement alongside any others in the concert repertory. Schumann’s description of op.25 no.1 as ‘a lovely picture in a dream’ acknowledges Chopin’s highly original figuration, in which ‘it would be a mistake to suppose that he allowed us to hear every one of its small notes’ (ex.10). He was equally adroit in studies that develop touch rather than bravura, especially evident in the three composed in 1839 for inclusion in Moscheles’s Méthode des méthodes.
The only 19th-century performer capable of doing justice to the expansive arpeggios of Chopin’s op.10 no.1 was said to have been Franz Liszt, and it was he who carried the evolution of the Romantic pianist to its fever pitch. Beginning at the astonishingly early age of 15, and inspired by the example of Paganini, Liszt published between 1826 and 1849 (he retired from concert touring in 1848) almost three dozen studies encompassing a dazzling spectrum of keyboard effects, an achievement not supplemented until the publication of Debussy’s 12 Etudes during World War I. The orchestral basis of these efforts is illustrated by the well-known Mazeppa, which demands three staves for the opening tune. A similar orchestral effect is imparted by the superhuman leaps in Liszt’s transcription of Paganini’s La campanella. Unlike Chopin’s, Liszt’s studies are peppered with improvisatory cadenzas and flourishes remarkable for their constant inventiveness. More than any other 19th-century figure, Liszt kept the tradition of improvisation alive, and there is no doubt that the printed version of the studies represent the distillation of years – perhaps even decades – of performance experience. The title ‘transcendental’ given to the best-known set (final version, 1852) proved an apt description of Liszt’s technique, for only one that transcended the capabilities of virtually all his contemporaries could do justice to his own music.
Apart from a rash of studies, Liszt produced a bewildering array of works for solo piano, many of which underwent continuous revision during his lifetime, and many of which remain unavailable in any reliable modern edition. The proportion of ‘salon music’ among his output is far less than that found among such contemporaries as Thalberg and Henselt. Outstanding among the larger collections are the three volumes of Années de pèlerinage, aural mementos of Liszt’s sojourn in Switzerland and Italy. His sources of inspiration were frequently literary (the three Petrarch sonnets) or scenic (Au bord d’une source, Les cloches de Genève), but are programmatic in only the most evocative sense. The ‘fantasia quasi sonata’ (the ‘Dante’ Sonata) that closes the second year is a large-scale work of tremendous intensity, in which the symbolic interval of the tritone serves as a unifying motto. The series of four Mephisto waltzes presents a comprehensive catalogue of the ‘demonic’ devices that proved so attractive to Liszt. The work now reckoned his most impressive is the B minor Sonata (1852–3), which succeeds in harnessing technical brilliance to the architectural demands of four-movements-in-one. The sonata is perhaps Liszt’s most impressive display of thematic transformation, built upon an edifice of five mostly cryptic and open-ended motifs. It would be a serious error, however, to overlook the tremendous investment made by Liszt in arrangements, transcriptions and works based on previous material. Most important among the latter are the 21 Hungarian Rhapsodies based on processed folk material, planting the seeds for the nationalistic movements at the end of the century. Liszt’s high opinion of Schubert is reflected in the more than 60 song transcriptions, including the complete Schwanengesang and Winterreise. His many operatic transcriptions and paraphrases are now rarely heard, but in his own day they not only provided opportunity for technical display but served many of the functions of the gramophone. Liszt lavished considerable care upon such arrangements, and in his Réminiscences de Don Juan (on Mozart’s Don Giovanni) he left behind a graphic representation of technique as sexual conquest.
Although much has been made of Liszt’s enthusiastic endorsement of Steinway’s new overstrung models in the 1870s, the vast majority of his music for piano was composed during the period in which he endorsed the flat-strung Erards with equal enthusiasm. He even found time to provide testimonials for Chickering, and for the Bösendorfer with its old-style Viennese action. In any event, all the instruments used by Liszt were equipped with softer wire and more elastic accretions of felt and leather hammer coverings than modern concert instruments. His long career spanned a phenomenal period in the piano’s development, and he never tired of dreaming up new and seemingly unattainable effects, such as the ‘vibrato assai’ in his transcription of Schumann’s Widmung (ex.11).
Liszt’s achievements inspired both competitors and imitators. His sharpest competition in the late 1830s was from Thalberg, who dazzled audiences with his novel device of placing the melody in the thumbs while surrounding it with a sea of arpeggios, giving the impression that more than one piano was being played. Thalberg specialized in operatic paraphrases (that on Rossini’s Moïse enjoyed particular popularity) and variations such as those on God Save the Queen; none of his extensive output remains in the active repertory today. A similar fate has befallen the transcriptions and salon pieces of two other celebrated virtuosos, Herz and Henselt. The most interesting and original pianistic figure next to Liszt in the mid-century was Alkan, who spent much of his life in obscurity. Novel (and sometimes epic) notions of structure and harmony have served to rekindle interest in Alkan’s music, whose variety rivals that of his better known contemporaries. His virtuosity was uncompromising, at times requiring an almost superhuman stamina.
Brahms’s virtuosity took Beethoven’s Hammerklavier as its
starting-point, as the rhythms and proportions of his C major Sonata, published
when he was scarcely 20, show. After the three early sonatas, however, Brahms
turned his attentions elsewhere. The chief focus during the late 1850s and
1860s was variation form. The 25 Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel
op.24 injected new life into a genre virtually moribund since Beethoven’s set
for Diabelli four decades earlier. Brahms summarized his technique – more
severe and less effect-orientated than that of Liszt – in two striking sets of
variations on Paganini’s Caprice no.24. Typical among the uncompromising
problems aired are the ‘blind’ octaves in no.11 of the second book (ex.12). Beginning with the Eight Piano Pieces
of op.76, published when he was in his mid-40s, Brahms focussed almost
exclusively for the next 15 years on six groups of smaller pieces described
variously as Capriccio, Intermezzo, Rhapsody, Ballade or Romanze. Although he
occasionally included literary inscriptions (from Sternau over the Andante of
the F minor Sonata, from Herder at the beginning of op.117), Brahms’s
fundamental allegiance remained with the absolute music tradition of the
Viennese Classicists. Strife between him and the avant-garde advocates of Liszt
and Wagner proved inevitable. A few of these shorter works fulfil the dramatic
demands of sonata form (the B minor Capriccio and the B Intermezzo from op.76), but Brahms relied
most heavily, as had Chopin and Schumann before him, on the simple ternary
scaffolding. If he rarely infused it with the endless flexibility of Chopin,
Brahms’s resourcefulness, particularly in matters of rhythm and phrase, rarely
faltered. Regardless of mood, he gravitated towards the middle and lower
registers of the piano, preferring chains of closely spaced, poignant
dissonance to clearly articulated textures. In spite of opportunities to
experiment with the newer, high-leverage actions, Brahms remained loyal until
the very end to the Viennese models that soon after his death were to pass into
obscurity. He remains one of the few composers in the Western tradition for
whom nostalgia for a bygone era provided a fresh and original impulse.
Keyboard music, §III: Piano music from c1750
By the 1870s the piano and its literature had attained a pre-eminence unrivalled both in the salons of the upwardly mobile middle class and on the concert stage. It claimed a repertory from Bach to Brahms that was, and remains, beyond comparison in its scope and its extent. In Mozart’s time there had been relatively little distinction between teaching or domestic pieces (sonatas, variations) and those intended for public consumption (primarily concertos and chamber music). After Beethoven’s death the emphasis among professionals on the development of a ‘superhuman’ technique (assisted by mechanical aids such as finger stretchers and dumb keyboards) led to a bifurcation of the solo repertory. A few major composers like Schumann attempted to fill the void with instructional cycles of high quality (Album für die Jugend); others such as Stephen Heller, who also composed large quantities of ambitious music, are remembered primarily for a steady stream of undemanding pieces aimed at the amateur market.
To expect the flood of masterpieces that had issued forth for almost a century to continue indefinitely would have been unrealistic even had it not been that the piano’s popularity reached a peak, to be followed by a shift of focus back to the orchestra. The piano continued to inspire composers and performers alike, but much of the activity now took place beyond the main arenas of Germany, Austria and France.
As in opera and orchestral music, nationalist piano music, particularly that of Liszt, betrayed considerable western European influences. Almost all the Russian composers of the time wrote for piano. The salon pieces of Glinka, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov are surpassed in interest by those of Tchaikovsky, but it was two other Russians who made the major contributions. Perhaps the most original of these was Musorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition (1874), a series of tableaux inspired by paintings of Victor Hartmann and linked by a recurring promenade theme in 5/4 metre. The writing, both stark and colourful, captures the folk flavour more effectively than Ravel’s opulent orchestration. Balakirev’s Islamey (two versions, 1869 and 1902) has acquired a certain status as the most technically demanding work in the virtuoso repertory – too difficult for even its composer, an accomplished pianist – but it is also skilfully written and dramatically effective.
The English-speaking world boasted its most successful 19th-century keyboard composer in Sterndale Bennett, most of whose music is unknown today. Admired by Schumann and Mendelssohn, and himself a great admirer of Beethoven, Bennett developed a piano style that avoided empty display but made considerable demands upon the performer, and maintained most interest in shorter forms. The American MacDowell, like most of his countrymen, received a thoroughly European training that included the encouragement of Liszt and Raff. Though remembered primarily for the Woodland Sketches (1896), an amiable series of portraits in the spirit of Schumann, he composed a substantial amount of ambitious music including four sonatas and more than two dozen concert études; the best of this repertory is receiving more frequent hearings today, especially in the USA.
The greater publicity accorded to the French impressionists has served to obscure the unique achievements of Spanish composers at the end of the century. It is easily forgotten that Albéniz’s style was already well formed before Debussy wrote his most important piano works. He enjoyed good relations with both Debussy and Ravel; the influences among the three composers were mutual. Albéniz’s major keyboard works, beginning with La vega (?1898) and culminating in the four books of his suite Iberia (1905–8), were contemporary with important keyboard works of Debussy. Though not as subtle structurally, these pieces are marked by spontaneity and novel figurations, including skilful evocations of both guitar and castanet. Granados excelled in the best tradition of salon music, as in the seven Valses poéticos, but his most important publication was the series of Goyescas (1909–12) stimulated by his favourite painter. The best work of Falla and Turina builds upon the achievements of Albéniz and Granados.
Born in Liège in the year that Beethoven completed his Missa solemnis, César Franck did not complete his two most important piano works, the Prélude, choral et fugue (1884) and the Prélude, aria et final (1887), until Romanticism was about to enter its twilight. In the Prélude, choral et fugue (ex.13 especially, he succeeded in tempering a Lisztian technique and cyclic procedures to solemn purpose, often recalling (and almost demanding) an organ pedal board. Though greatly influenced by Wagner, Chabrier is often most characteristic in his piano pieces, which contributed in France to the emancipation of dissonance and the interest in modal melodies. Saint-Saëns, Dukas and d’Indy did not invest their solo piano music with anything like the interest of their orchestral compositions (and, in Saint-Saëns’s case, of his keyboard concertos).
The most important French composer for solo piano in the generation before Debussy was Fauré. Although he cultivated the by then celebrated genres of Chopin (especially the nocturne, impromptu and barcarolle), he brought to each a highly idiosyncratic figuration based upon equal importance of the hands and free polyphony within an arpeggiated background. Unlike much late Romantic keyboard music, Fauré’s character-pieces sound less difficult than they are but repay careful study. While Debussy was still writing in a post-Romantic style his contemporary Erik Satie was setting down the three Gymnopédies (1888) that, in their sardonic simplicity, helped stake out the composer’s iconoclastic position in French musical life. These were succeeded by more than a dozen sets of humorous piano pieces with provocative titles such as Sonatine bureaucratique; more than his actual music, Satie’s acerbic unpretentiousness has exercised considerable influence on 20th-century composers such as John Cage.
Keyboard music, §III: Piano music from c1750
If the 20th century was less dominated by the piano than was the 19th or late 18th, the range of its achievement in terms of widening the instrument’s expressive potential, is notable. Although few of its composers contributed to the repertory to quite the same extent as many of their ancestors, both Rachmaninoff and Skryabin stand comparison with Chopin and Liszt as virtuoso performers of their own exploratory keyboard works. But while Rachmaninoff made his way into the new century by expanding upon distinctly 19th-century style of piano playing, Skryabin developed a more searching harmonic language which brought him closer to Schoenberg, Webern and Berg than to his compatriot. Another contemporary, Charles Ives, was evidently the most radical of an outstanding generation of composers (among them Stravinsky, Bartók and Prokofiev) who were unwittingly to found a tradition of 20th-century pianism. Moreover, the continuing importance of the piano as a solo instrument has made it possible to chart the main lines of 20th-century musical thinking from a study of the piano music alone, particularly since a number of composers (including Debussy, Skryabin, Bartók, Schoenberg, Boulez and Stockhausen) have made some of their most important stylistic discoveries through their keyboard works.
Although it may appear that Bartók was the most radical of the early 20th-century composers in attitude to keyboard technique, Debussy, barely a generation his senior, represents an even more fundamental secession from the 19th-century pianistic tradition. His imaginative disregard of the essentially percussive qualities of the instrument enabled him to develop a new pianism, dependent on sonority rather than attack, on subtle dynamic shading rather than sustained cantabile. His own playing was evidently notable for its range of colour within a pianissimo dynamic (aided by the use of both pedals) and this is reflected in a Chopinesque notation that details every nuance of touch, as well as of dynamics and phrasing. Precise indications of pedalling are rare, but Debussy’s use of sustained bass notes reveals a new awareness of the possibilities of the sustaining pedal and of the minute differences that can be obtained between the total clarity of legato pedalling and the total blurring of undamped strings (see ex.14).
Ravel’s more traditional virtuosity, however, marries this new impressionism to a bravura inherited from Liszt, developing a characteristic brilliance of keyboard usage that was, in turn, to have as great an influence on Bartók as were Debussy’s more far-reaching experiments in keyboard sonority. As early as 1911, Bartók was stressing the percussive aspect of the instrument through the use of ostinato rhythms; this xylophonic approach was later extended to embrace the more vibraphone-like qualities of a laissez vibrer that made expressive use of the suspension and decline of a sound as well as of its initial attack. Bartók was also to continue a Beethovenian investigation of the sharply defined contrasts possible within the instrument’s wide dynamic range, and of the contrasts in sound quality suggested by its high, middle and low registers. He continued Debussy’s exploration of the resonances obtainable from overlapping harmonies coloured by the sustaining pedal, which later proved equally important in the light of instrumental techniques developed after World War II.
Where Debussy’s most important contribution to contemporary pianism had resulted from his refusal to acknowledge the essentially mechanical limitations of the instrument, Ives was to make his contribution through a disregard for the limitations of the ten fingers of the pianist, some of his chords necessitating the assistance of a third hand or the pianist’s arms. If Ives was ahead of his time, his almost exact contemporary, Rachmaninoff, while making a sizable contribution to piano literature, proved less significant in relation to the future of both musical thought and keyboard technique. Similarly, Prokofiev’s nine sonatas and numerous smaller pieces are characteristic of his own stylistic scope and Lisztian virtuosity rather than indicative of future developments. The same is true of the works of other important composers of piano music during the first three decades of the century, including Valen, Pijper, Dohnányi, Martinů, Casella, Skalkottas, Shostakovich and, most notably, Hindemith.
Schoenberg, though not himself a pianist, made his two most important musical discoveries – atonality and, later, 12-note composition – through the medium of the piano. The last of the Three Pieces op.11 (his first published work for solo piano, 1909) was confidently cast in a language that owed little either to the impressionistic colouring of contemporary French music or to the more Romantic, large-scale gestures of the late 19th-century Austro-German keyboard composers. The massive stretch of its atonal counterpoints, combined with the extreme contrasts of its fleeting textures and eruptive dynamics (in addition to the introduction of keyboard harmonics in the first piece of the set) remained unsurpassed for almost 40 years, until overtaken by still more demanding techniques after World War II. Equally significant in the trend away from Romantic rhetoric, his Six Little Pieces op.19 explore the expressive qualities of the instrument (mostly at the lowest end of the dynamic range) with a restraint more typical of his friend and pupil, Webern, whose single mature work for the piano was such a major landmark. Webern’s Variations op.27 invoke a much earlier concept of instrumental music as an extension of, and almost indistinguishable from, vocal music. The essential simplicity of the piece becomes complex through the continual overlap of wide-ranging contrapuntal lines (and thus of the pianist’s hands), demanding a new technical approach to extended part-writing, as well as to the delicate balance between harmonic and rhythmic phrasing (see ex.15). This piece, with its structural finesse and abstracted espressivo, has cast its benevolent shadow on most subsequent composers of piano music.
Stravinsky’s pianistic influence extends well beyond the few works he originally wrote for keyboard, not least because he was one of the first composers to establish the piano as an orchestral instrument (Symphony in Three Movements, Petrushka, The Wedding). His piano (or piano duet) versions of many of his orchestral works are, in effect, original pianistic conceptions, such was his instinctive feeling for the characteristic spacing of keyboard sonorities.
It was in 1912 that Cowell first began to experiment with hand and arm clusters as a means of colouring and outlining his melodic shapes and of creating harmonic areas rather than defined chords. In addition to these keyboard effects, he later explored the production of sounds directly from the strings themselves, either as pizzicatos, as glissandos on single strings or across the strings (as in The Banshee) or in conjunction with silently depressed keys (in order to produce arpeggiated chords, as in Aeolian Harp), or as harmonics, produced by the simultaneous stopping of relevant strings.
Keyboard music, §III: Piano music from c1750
The possibilities explored by Cowell were woven by Cage into the aleatory fabric of his most substantial work for piano, Music of Changes. Cage also undertook a more radical examination of the piano as a resonating body: the accompaniment to his song, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, is rendered entirely on various parts of the frame, with which the strings are made to resonate in sympathy by depressing the sustaining pedal. Moreover, he transformed the basic sound quality of the instrument by a ‘prepared’ extension of its timbral possibilities: by forcing certain strings to vibrate against wedges of various materials (metal, wood, rubber etc.), he opened up a particularly astonishing range of keyboard sonorities in his Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–8). Other composers then turned to enriching the basically harp-like sounds obtained by acting directly on the strings, whether with various types of beater, plectra or cluster-producing blocks of differing length, weight and constitution, or with objects placed on the strings, to be set in motion by the action of the hammers. Together with the kinds of electronic enhancement now more readily to hand, the continuing development of sounds from within and around the instrument’s body may be limited only by the patience and physical reach of the player.
It seems unlikely, however, that such methods of sound production will become established ingredients of instrumental technique unless and until manufacturers can agree to standardize the piano’s internal structure. The relative indeterminacy of results may account for the fact that inside-piano effects have been generally ignored by those composers who have contributed importantly to the mid-20th century piano literature, including Copland, Feldman and Tippett, as well as Messiaen, Boulez, Berio and Stockhausen.
Even the most opulent of Messiaen’s later works have a muscular background related to the kind of rhythmic counterpoint he first developed in Mode de valeurs et d’intensités (1949), where the basic idea of a rhythmic ostinato was widened into an ostinato system of serial control over the separate elements of duration, dynamics and attack as well as pitch. This made almost insuperable demands on the performer (as, later, did Boulez’s Structures for two pianos and Stockhausen’s early piano pieces) since such precise rhythmic and dynamic definition, within lines broken by jagged extremes of pitch, are scarcely realizable except by electronic means (see ex.16). The intellectual strictures of this piece merged with a freer, unmistakable pianism in his Cantéyodjayâ and in the vast Catalogue d’oiseaux, creating a range of keyboard colour as pervasive in its influence on the works of younger composers as was that of Bartók or Stravinsky on the music of an earlier generation.
Boulez’s three sonatas and Stockhausen’s first 11 Klavierstücke (all dating from the late 1940s and 1950s) stand as models of contemporary keyboard writing, both for the variety of their neo-virtuosity and for the range of their textural contrasts and expressive sonorities. Musically they display a sharp-edged violence whose stinging contrasts (which had at first seemed unplayable) have had the effect of enlarging both the scope and the standards of virtuoso pianism. They also demand an ability to define each degree of a dynamic palette that extends from ppp to fff and beyond, in combination with as many varieties of touch or attack. In the case of Stockhausen, these controls must additionally be linked to an ability to play clusters of precisely defined exterior limits, whether these take the form of single attacks, arpeggiated decorations or multiple glissandos (see ex.17).
In such works, and in pieces by such stylistically diverse composers as Barraqué, Dallapiccola, Berio, Pousseur, Xenakis, Carter and Cage, pedal technique is no longer left to the good taste of the performer but must comply with the specific demands of the score. The use of the sustaining pedal has become as integral to musical expression as dynamics or phrasing: techniques such as half-pedalling, after-pedalling (catching the resonance of a chord after releasing the attack) and flutter-pedalling (effecting the gradual release of an attack) have become commonplace. Increasing numbers of works (Boulez’s Sonata no.3, Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke V–XI and Berio’s Sequenza IV, for instance) also require the use of the centre sostenuto pedal found on concert instruments to free selected strings from the damping mechanism, so allowing them to vibrate in sympathy with notes which may subsequently be sounded. Berio’s Sequenza IV, built on the ground bass effect of such sustained notes or chords continually reinforced by the movement of the decorations imposed upon them, is a spectacular study in the use and management of this pedal.
With the influence of the international avant garde on the wane, the age of pan-European masterworks would seem gradually to have given way to a period of retreat and of nationalist consolidation. Of those born in the 1920s, Xenakis has persisted with a keyboard virtuosity beyond the reach of all but the exceptional few, as indeed have Ferneyhough and others of the 1940s generation. While Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke XII–XVI (1978–84) double as instrumental episodes in Licht, his operatic work-in-progress, and Boulez’s single-movement Incises (1994) is likewise to form part of a larger whole, Carter’s Night Fantasies (1980) and Ligeti’s Etudes (1985–) are slowly working their way into the repertory of those pianists seeking maximalist challenge in an era increasingly dominated by the minimalist. But while there is a growing number of composers (many from former USSR countries, including Pärt, Gorecki and Gubaidulina) whose predominantly contemplative music seldom finds room for a non-sustaining instrument such as the piano, there is plenty of evidence that traditional keyboard techniques continued to flourish in more popular vein elsewhere: Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (1980) and Nancarrow’s only work not written for player-piano, the stylish Two Canons for Ursula (1989), are two fine examples of a transatlantic virtuosity that was clearly alive and well in the closing years of the century.
The revival of the harpsichord (since 1889, when the firms of Erard, Pleyel and Tomasini each displayed newly made harpsichords at the Paris Exposition) led to a distinct, modern harpsichord style in which timbre as material to work with became an important feature of the composition. The development of the modern concert harpsichord modelled after the so-called Bach disposition of the alleged Bach harpsichord (catalogue no.316 at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Berlin), with two manuals and a variety of stops, usually disposed 1 x 4', 2 x 8' and 1 x 16', therefore had an influence on the style of many compositions, including Hugo Distler's Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings op.14 (1935–6). In this concerto, Distler made use of the then fashionable neo-Baroque Terrassendynamik (‘terraced dynamics’) and introduced echo effects by alternating between tutti registration and registration without the 16' stop.
Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, in his Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (1978; based on his Recitativo ed Aria, 1954–5), also used the registration effects of an instrument with the ‘Bach disposition’ plus harp stop and theorbo stop (on the 8' and 16'). Haubenstock-Ramati was possibly the first composer to exploit fully the harpsichord's percussive quality. He introduced the harpsichord as a noise-making, pointilistic solo instrument in the spirit of musique concrète. His Concerto was the first of several works in which the modern harpsichord serves as the only traditional acoustic instrument in the ensemble: the pre-determined variety of stop combinations available on the instrument permits serial employment of the parameter timbre in a consequently mechanistic manner.
The interplay between pedal stops on the two-manual keyboard forms
the basis of another style of composition for the modern concert harpsichord,
most obviously in Continuum by György Ligeti (1968). The composition's
first sound, the interval G–B, demonstrates the aspect of changing timbres that is
used throughout this composition: it is repeated many times prestissimo (resembling
chains of trills), yet with alternating registration each time. Thus, the sound
event receives a certain dynamic spatial structure, although it remains (for a
certain period) static and has no development in traditional terms of musical
construction. Ligeti referred in this context to the realization of ‘acoustic
illusions’, influenced by the graphic art of Maurits Escher. Ligeti's
composition has had many followers, from the negative parody of the title in Discontinuum,
composed in 1978 by François Vercken, to the eclectic use of the trill as the
dominant material for composition in works such as Penderecki's Partita
(1971, rev.1991), Klaas de Vrie's Toccata Americana (1978), Hope Lee's Melboac
(1983), Kaija Saariaho's Jardin secret II (1984–6) and Ruth Zechlin's Diagonalen
(1990).
Another possibility offered by the two-manual harpsichord is the introduction of different temperaments on each of the manuals. In his Tombeau de Marin Maraisfor Baroque violin, two bass viols and harpsichord (1967), Pierre Bartholomeé suggested dividing the octave into 21 equal steps. Hans Zender, too, extended the traditional tempered system for the harpsichord in his Kantate nach Meister Eckhart (1980). Other compositions, in which each manual of the two-manual instrument has its own temperament, are Minos (1978) by Anneli Arho, The female modes (1985) by Ted Ponjee, and – designated for any keyboard instrument, but most effectively performed on the harpsichord – Fantango (1984) by Jukka Tiensuu.
Some compositions make use of the contrasting sound of two different keyboard instruments, such as piano and harpsichord. Martinů's Concert pour clavecin et petit orchestre (1935) is presumably the first work with such a combination of instruments. Here the orchestral forces include piano, flute, bassoon and strings. Elliott Carter's Double Concerto for harpsichord and piano with two chamber orchestras (1961) is the best known composition that features the contrast between those two keyboard instruments. In his cover notes to a recording of this work (Nonesuch H 71314), Carter wrote that ‘the harpsichord and piano … are each given music idiomatic to their instruments, meant to appeal to the imaginations of their performers and cast them into clearly identifiable, independent roles’. Written for a particular model of harpsichord made by the American harpsichord builder John Challis (1907–74), with a great variety of timbres and a unique dynamic gradation of each stop owing to full-position and half-position hitches, the differentiation in sound that Carter employs in the harpsichord part matches the richness of shading of which the piano is capable.
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